Arvore Targets Triple-A VR Games From Brazil

Brazil's game development scene is attempting something ambitious: moving from external contract work to original triple-A titles. Arvore, a São Paulo-based studio founded in 2017, is leading this charge. The company just shipped The Boys: Trigger Warning, a virtual reality game for the Meta Quest platform published by Sony Pictures. It represents the first game fully based on the TV show, not just character cameos in other franchises.

Co-founders Ricardo Justus and Rodrigo Terra sat down with GamesBeat at Gamescom Latam to discuss the project. The game took approximately three years to develop, including nine months of negotiations with Sony Pictures, the show creators, and platform holders Meta and PlayStation. At its peak, the team reached 77 people working on the title.

Justus described the development experience as their biggest project to date. The studio worked directly with show creator Eric Kripke and his team on the narrative. Some actors from the TV series reprised their roles, providing voice work for the game. The story is set between the fourth and fifth seasons of the show, translating an ongoing television property into an interactive format.

This wasn't a commissioned project. Arvore was already prototyping superhero interactions in VR, exploring gesture-based mechanics for superpowers. They wanted to lampoon the genre with sarcasm and humor, similar to what The Boys does. When they met Sony Pictures representatives, the studio showed their prototypes. Sony Pictures was exploring The Boys as a game franchise. The alignment happened organically.

Terra, who also serves as president of Abragames (the Brazilian Association of Game Development), noted this was the first opportunity for the studio to work with such a major IP. Arvore had previously worked with Sony Pictures intellectual property, but this marked their first full adaptation of a show.

The studio's path to this point involved significant risk. Arvore received venture capital funding early during the VR hype era, but all growth since 2020 came from revenue generated by their own games. They've shipped titles including Pixel Ripped 1978 (2023), Yuki (2021), and The Line (2020). The Line, an interactive VR love story directed by Ricardo Laganaro, won a Primetime Emmy in 2020 for outstanding innovation in interactive programming.

That Emmy opened doors with Hollywood. According to GamesIndustry.biz, The Line also won at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival, marking Brazil's first award there in 76 years. The recognition demonstrated global appeal and craftsmanship, even as the VR market experienced ups and downs.

Arvore now employs 130 people. The studio is working on even bigger projects they cannot yet discuss publicly. Justus stated that triple-A scale doesn't really exist in VR unless it's a first-party game from Meta, and even those don't exist anymore. The team is still working on VR titles, but they're branching out into new areas to diversify beyond the VR market.

VR remains a challenging space. In 2017 there was more hope. The founders approached the medium with a multidisciplinary team of storytellers, game creators, and artists. They wanted to create new things, interested in immersive storytelling that doesn't necessarily have to be in VR. They want to create input innovations and gameplay innovations.

The physical reality of VR development involves constant friction. Developers prototype gesture-based interactions for superpowers, testing how hand tracking responds to player movements. They build systems where players can feel the weight of throwing a punch or the resistance of blocking an attack. These mechanics require precise calibration—too much lag and the illusion breaks, too little feedback and the experience feels hollow (a problem that has plagued users for years, frankly).

Terra addressed the recurring prophecy that VR will soon break through. He's heard predictions of imminent mainstream adoption since his early involvement in the field. The VR market in Brazil remains modest, though major firms are promoting headsets for productivity. Apple and Meta are making investments in different directions to foster growth, but wider adoption will take time.

Access remains crucial. Smartphones became popular in Brazil because public policy allowed domestic manufacturing, cutting prices in half. VR doesn't have the same advantage. The VR community in Brazil is expanding, with developers finding ways to import equipment despite limitations. Many bring headsets into the country by various means, suggesting a small but enthusiastic base of users.

"It's a niche market, but that's why our focus at Arvore remains on the global stage," Terra stated. The studio knows the Brazilian market will take time to grow. If Meta, Google, and Apple start selling officially in Brazil and invest there, adoption could accelerate. Brazilian people love technology—they were among the first to adopt WhatsApp, Discord, and TikTok. It's just a matter of access.

Arvore also created an AI-driven game called Tabula Rasa, which won an award at South by Southwest. This demonstrates their willingness to experiment beyond traditional VR development. The studio maintains the same innovative DNA across platforms, using input innovation approaches that work for VR but can translate elsewhere.

The company's evolution mirrors broader industry shifts. They began with B2B and B2C projects, plus physical and location-based installations. Immersive experiences were what they saw as the future of entertainment, and they still are. They chose Brazil because there's talent, resources, and an international blue ocean market where they could start working.

However, the marathon starts two steps behind for Brazilian developers. What they needed was to develop a team so creative and diverse that they could create unique projects recognized among other big studios. Seven years on, they're still going. There have been many market movements with this year's ups and downs, but they're still here and growing.

Whether users actually pay for triple-A VR experiences remains the real question. The hardware is improving—Apple's Vision Pro demonstrates what's possible when technology fits into a lightweight form factor. But the current VR market mostly targets adults with a taste for technology and the means to invest in it. A generational shift is needed, where more children receive headsets as gifts and immersive tech becomes integral to entertainment.

Arvore's strategy reflects pragmatism. They're not abandoning VR—they have VR games in their pipeline. But they're exploring other platforms as well. The challenges VR faces are solvable. How fast they're going to be solved is the question. They're not being solved as fast as the founders would like, which is why they're exploring other platforms.

The studio's growth from 77 people on The Boys project to 130 employees company-wide shows momentum. But scaling triple-A production requires sustained revenue, not just one successful title. Each project must fund the next. The Boys: Trigger Warning was their biggest project, but it's still VR. Triple-A scale in VR remains elusive without first-party backing.

Time will tell if Arvore can sustain this trajectory. The Brazilian market will take time to mature. Global adoption depends on hardware becoming affordable and accessible. Until then, studios like Arvore must balance innovation with commercial viability, one successful game at a time. Whether the industry rewards this approach remains uncertain.

Artūras Malašauskas is an AI Systems Integrator with 20+ years of production-grade web engineering experience. He has designed, shipped, and scaled enterprise Python/PHP systems for logistics, SaaS, and public-sector clients. For the past year, he has focused exclusively on AI integrations: deploying open-source LLMs, building generative media pipelines (image, audio, video), and engineering multi-agent workflows for real production environments. His standard: reproducibility, security, cost-efficient inference—no vaporware. He documents and evaluates emerging AI tooling, separating verified capabilities from marketing noise. Technical editor at: muza-ai.eu, ai-verslas.lt, ai-naujinos.lt Connect on LinkedIn