The latest Five Nights At Freddy's game, Secret of the Mimic, received VR support on PlayStation VR2 on April 28, nearly a full year after its PC and PlayStation 5 release. Developer Steel Wool Studios has clarified that the team had to pivot to prioritizing flatscreen after FNaF: Help Wanted 2 failed to meet sales expectations.
Secret of the Mimic's initial announcement promised PS VR2 support. Its PlayStation store listing listed compatibility with the headset. Steel Wool even had demos of the game running on PS VR2 at Pax West in 2024. Then, in early 2025 at a Sony State of Play event, the new release date trailer suspiciously removed any mention of PS VR2. The store page was updated with a new trailer, also without the PS VR2 logo, and a June 2025 release date was confirmed for PC and PS5.
Mike Johnson
Shortly before the flatscreen release, game director Evan Lampi, confirmed that VR support was still coming post release, with no ETA on when that would happen.
We finally have clarity courtesy of a post from Steel Wool developer Rodney Brett. Here is that post in its entirety:
The decision was largely made when the sales of HW2 rolled in. The game did not perform to expectations(not even close to HW1). In general, HW1 was released at the peak of VR's mainstream popularity. Gamers were still very intrigued by the new and exciting medium and I remember going to GDC during and after HW1's release and seeing VR everywhere and at every booth. However, by the time HW2 was close to being released, a lot has happened and the VR market really shrank to just the niche crowd of enthusiasts that love the medium. I always compared the VR gamers to people that love playing driving games with the entire steering wheel/seat + peddles setup with force feedback or people that love to go all-out on HOTAS controllers for flight games. The ones that are into VR really love it and the rest really hate it.. with no in-between. That's because the hardware requires a steep initial investment. Ever notice that there aren't any "casual fans" of VR? You're either super into it, or you hate playing games in VR.
The dev costs for HW2 was a lot more than the first game on top of this, and it's not hard to figure that out on your own just by playing the second game. Simply compare the credits of the second to the first and that team size is at least 3x the team we had with the first game. So after that stark realization, we knew that there was no way we could sustain ourselves on VR-centric titles created by a large team anymore. Thus, priority shifted to flat.. but we still didn't want to entirely abandon the VR version, thus Devoted stepped in to complete it.
FNaF: Help Wanted 2 released in December 2023 on Steam and PS VR2, with a Quest port following in May 2024. The first Help Wanted released on Meta Quest in 2020, benefitting from the COVID-19 pandemic boost that VR in general experienced in 2020 and 2021.
As of this article, Secret of the Mimic's VR support is still limited to PS VR2, though Steel Wool said in a Steam post April 30 that PC VR support is still coming.
Five Nights At Freddy's: Secret of the Mimic is available now in VR on PS VR2.
