Pavlov

A fantastic VR shooter that fell victim to over-development, a seemingly frequent issue with VR games.

In my opinion, this game was in a far better state years ago than it is today. A flourishing community was extinguished as Vankrupt expanded the games audience outside of PCVR to generate more business. To make room for the Quest market and cross-play, a lot of the keystone features were dumbed down, gutted, or entirely removed. The most egregious example of this was with the Steam Workshop and modding scene.

With the Workshop, game-changing addons were easy to create, share, and install. The variety of content that could be made by the community kept things fresh. To get the game on consoles with modding, Vankrupt switched over to a 3rd party mod-hosting platform called Mod.io. The switch to Mod.io was understandable and a necessity for bringing the game to other platforms; however, the retiring of the Steam Workshop was an over-step and led to years of community-made content becoming useless, broken, and lost to time. With newfound cross-play limitations, newly made custom content became far more difficult to create, manage, share, and update.

Additionally, Vankrupt is turning Pavlov into a passive-income stream similar to CS:GO. Things such as gun skins are now for sale with in-game currency. This is fine, but the pricing on these coins is a lot to stomach. The most expensive package costs about the same as a new large-title game. It feels a bit insulting that new content that customizes your experience is being sold for money when a giant chunk of community-made content and history was culled.

many possibilities with the mod capabilities. this is basically Gmod, in VR.

Decided to play TTT and within 5 min I watched a clown play Russian roulette with a Desert Eagle. The person closest to him got blamed and the entire room filled with bullets in a matter of seconds while some guy came running in screaming AHLELELELELELE everything exploded and the round ended.

This game had a really good zombies mode and completely messed it up by removing the points system and regular round system. I don't know what the devs were thinking in removing all the good parts of this gamemode and just making it all sprinters. I don't recommend this to anyone who wants to play zombies but the multiplayer if fun at least.

Still tons of fun and 10/10 worth it in 2025, literally my favorite VR game!!
Many thanks for pushing VR frontiers forward all these years!

I just wish that PCVR community could play with the rest of people who's using standalone headsets.
Maybe more effort could be put into marketing to bring old and new people, making some sellouts.. I myself literally forgot how fun this game was until I stumbled upon it on YT and now I'm having a blast in my old Valve Index.

Also I think the old main menu screen can be redesigned to be more inviting and with more emphasis on customization, like having a mirror or something.

Also, where the heck is my favorite Castle Wars map?? It was so popular..

This game is amazing and late night TTT in siberia is peak

This game was fun, was... The updates that changed the modding stuff, since then, and after the servers just slowly died. I remember playing the push mode, now no active server higher than real 3 people. i used to love this game. but now sadly i cant recommend it.

What the heck happened to this game? I played this a ton on the standalone Quest and had a great time playing modded maps and game mods with friends. Now, nothing works and the game runs like crap. Please do not buy.

very fun, best gamemodes are TTT and TDM

destroyed community content which is what made the game what it was

Not a good game. The recoil system is ripped from CS, and its just bad. It makes no sense that the recoil pushes the barrel up instead of back. If you want realistic recoil in a VR game, try H3VR out, then you'll realise how bad it is in this game.

penultimate vr coop gaming with buds game, easy enough to set up and fuck around in

GOOD. ttt is fun. literally everything is fun would play this everyday. just be ready for people random killing and mean people team killing

the best counter strike inspired vr fps game available.

Lots of racism, toxicity, and likely getting doxxed a shit ton.

peak VR

I almost feel like writing a review is pointless because this game stands for itself. If you are looking for an intense and competitive shooter, this game is for you. It's got loads of fun game modes with people who are driven to do well and win.

Then, if your're looking for a social platform with people who just like chatting and having fun, it has loads of game modes for that. Whatever your play style is, you can probably find something in this game that matches it. I've spent an unhealthy amount of time on this game and whenever I play video games, it's almost exclusively Pavlov.

Highly recommended if you're looking for something fun. If you want to be a normal, efficient, useful person, I don't recommend it. You won't be able to put it down if you're anything like me.

Great game. good community. nice mods too

Sadly this game is slowly dying due to the community being more and more toxic every single day and the devs making poor choices.

Even then when you are in a full lobby for whatever gamemode you are doing you are gonna have a blast as there is still plenty of very chill and some of the most hilarious people you will find in a shooter. Not only that but also there is multiple gamemodes, maps, and countless mods that will keep you busy. And even with skins added to the game recently there is nothing pay to win or to pay for besides skins (that the devs choose you can not gamble and trade like in CSGO); which is great since that means everyone gets everything equally, so you don't need to worry about dying to some loser with a $20 gun or because he grinded for a hundred hours while you are given nerf guns (unless you have a nerf gun mod lol). everyone is treated equally. But also besides all that there is things about this game I personally prefer over CSGO and other shooters (both flat and VR). Reloading feels very smooth and responsive and all the gun's recoil and behavior is also smooth and feel right vs something like Contractors where guns feel very stiff and awkward. Even though it is not perfect there is also some sense of balance in this game and almost every weapon can be useable (unlike CSGO and other shooters where you are stuck to like 3 guns). Proximity chat and radio chat is also such a blessing as you can hear everyone talking to each other which leads to some of the funniest moments i ever had and also helpful for when it comes to tactics (and also extremely immersive). and also defusing the bomb in SnD takes actual skill (unless you have clippers then it doesn't take any skill) since you actually have to be calm after an intense shoot out and push in the buttons manually instead of just holding one button for 5 - 10 seconds. Which also leads me to gun fights in general in this game are way more intense and exciting. Bullets will be flying and people shouting and all you can do is keep your head down while your ally gets turned into swiss cheese and all you can do is cry while experiencing the horrors of war while the person shooting at you is doing stupid voices causing you to laugh giving away your position and making your aim worse. plus with this being VR and not having to worry about physical bodies or hands and things feeling "free" you can do so many things you can't do in other VR and flat games like blind fire, prone into cheeky spots, suicide bomb with cooked grenades, gangster fire a .50 cal, etc.

So anyway if you want constant full servers play Shack and if you want to avoid Gorilla Tag and Rec Room kids then play PC just know that PC isn't as active but on certain days it will be slamming and it is a great time. It is worth the price and you will find something to enjoy whenever you are casual or competitive. If the community would go back to how it use to be (everyone was chill and funny) and not continue this road of being toxic assholes and causing people to quit the game, and the devs would do a better job with updates. Then this game can continue live on and be active and not be in the situation that it is currently in. Either Way you will have a great time and it is worth the price, and even if you can't play VR there is plenty of videos on Youtube on this game that you will enjoy.

Lots of fun would recommend for new and experienced VR users. Just wish it had a more active player base.

Russian roulette on a minecraft map is interesting......

Updating to a new engine killed every mod. Coming back to this game after a couple years and I can't play any of my favourite custom modes, all the modding devs have jumped ship.

I was flying helicopter full of people. One of them pulled out grenade launcher, and asked if he can shoot in our heli. Everyone screamed nooo, as loud as they could. Five seconds he shot it, screaming alah bar.

this game was fun a while ago but they charge your for skins on a game people paid for i would not mind if they made it free and had to pay for skins but they remove steam workshop tell us to buy skins on a game we paid for

Good game, just very much so dead af.

23.3.2025 Last 24 hour peak player count 284.

very great game and the community is quite something, search and destroy and ttt is really fun, 100% reccomended

Not bad to play with friends, the only thing is I don't have anyone to play this with. Add me and we can play for sure! I speak english/ spanish. Recommended!

got rid of the steam workshop and added shitty micro transactions what happened to you guys

overall fun game but the inclusion of micro transactions and catering to quest users is a bit disapointing as most of the origional player base has left and been replaced by a 10 year old who isnt even tall enough to not crouch constanly.
tl'dr fun game bad devs

Sadly a husk of it's former self due to the horrible community management and structuring of their move from PC only to multi-platform. The move to go from workshop to Mod.io, while having good intentions, seriously divided the community, and it has never recovered. They have gone on record with viewing it as near pointless to put out updates for PC due to how much the player base has shrunk.
Tried to come back to it recently, if you like TTT and the occasional CS lobby, well you have that, not much else...
Go play Contractors if you want a good selection of game modes with well-fleshed out modding tools and larger lobbies. Sad to see it in this state after how big it was.

Ok, this is mostly about gameplay, the gameplay and gun mechanics are very nice, but, the game is dead and most mods kinda suck now that only mod.io is supported, other than that, the only mods and mode i recommend/like is ww2 and any ww1 or ww2 map/mod

I was really hoping it would be as fun as I thought it was gonna but damn does it suck and the people playing it are toxic as hell.

Not worth the money anymore. Gun play is fine, but ruining the steam workshop killed the game.

I loved this game it was so fun to chat and interact with the people and play wacky game-modes. However, after the integration update the player base as been shot and has been going down hill ever since.
Vankrupt listen to the hate and give the people what the want instead of shitty micro-transactions.

I'm not going to say "Dead game" that often but unless you want to only play TDM on one map and countless lobbies of TTT then I just can't recommend this game and it's current state

Borderline abandonware that they shoehorned unnecessary microtransactions into for some unknown reason. A husk of its former self with barely a sliver of it's original player base that sticks around. Do not support these types of practices, nor these devs. Pathetic and disappointing.

They broke this game. With the change to cross-play it now isn't worth playing. They got rid of so many good mods. The modding community is gone. You could drive tanks and play a battle-royal.... now... no. On top of it. They have not fixed the issue with accepting the licence agreement after two years. Thanks Sony and the Devs of this game. It was fun... now no. Not even worth buy on sale.

I would love to give this game a good review, I still play it, and I have a lot of fun with it. But holy fuck does the moderation suck major donkey dick. This game's community is god fucking awful, there is no reason I should be hearing so many children spouting racial slurs with zero consequence.

CS:GO in VR, but instead of Russians yelling "Rush B," it’s furries and social rejects screaming "UwU" while team-killing you. The gunplay is realistic enough to make you feel like a tactical genius—until you drop your magazine mid-fight and get knifed by a 12 year old sweat who lives in the metaverse.

Micro Transactions, remove mod support and make the game run worse with each update.
Modern game development strikes again.

best shooting game ever

friendly comunity

good graphics

still gets updates

great shooter for vr but no more players as much now and bad updates gets very dry

Formerly A Great Game for FPS Players, Currently A Pain for Oculus Headset Users.

Loved it back years ago. But now I won't touch it unless they put some real fixes in.
Waited all night to install some 70+ gigs of game and mods to play some VR CoDZombies just to have a headache upon launching it up this afternoon.

The devs have seemingly stopped working to fix SteamVR/OpenXR runtime issues for users who play SteamVR games using Rift PCVR or Quests via either wired connection or wireless.
You'll have significant screen shaking, the view kinda warps as you tilt your head, and it really really friggin hurts the eyes.

When they moved the game to Unreal 5 it introduced issues for SteamVR's runtime when used with Meta/Oculus Headsets. Instead of proactively finding a workaround or reverting the engine back, they've just Said this back on June 12th 2023 when the update launched.
"It is recommended to launch the game using the Oculus mode to prevent performance issues for the time being."

Even as a Former Rift S user who absolutely loved his first headset and it's Oculus software features, I nowadays despise the Oculus Dashboard.
It has no native Dark Mode Option, highly unforgiving to modifications and is unsupportive of QoL improvements.
Meta and the Big Zuck Screwed us over buy effectively killing Oculus.

If you don't like being forced to use the Oculus dashboard in 2025 as a Rift or Quest user, I unfortunately don't recommend this game.

Wait till you hear about Fixes specifically pertaining to OpenXR and SteamVR Compatibility.

Not worth buying reasons:
In one hours play time already met 1-2 cheaters who was just shooting with mosin without missing any shots and other was just runing with 2 machine guns and hitting everyone in the head...
Kept having visual bugs with made my eyes hurt.
Few servers to play and most of them are dm with is boring as hell after few minutes...
Menus felt like they were hidden had to google how to leave server.

Played cs maps it was cool to expierence them in vr sadly most of them are in dm

killed the community by nuking mods and updating the engine to UE5 (honestly not a horrible idea, if it weren't for that decision clearing everything the community made). Peak hours, you find enough lobbies for varied gameplay, but at off hours you maybe have 9 lobbies with enough people to play. The bots are nowhere near good enough for a fun experience in offline mode.

It's not a bad game though. The gameplay is fun, the moments are funnier, and balancing is pretty good. No single gun reigns supreme, everything has a use. Costs are pretty much perfect, and while sniping is basically impossible, and the complete lack of aim smoothing makes long range shooting a hassle, the game still feels perfect.

Could we get an update for the shooting range? While new maps and cosmetics are great, it feels like the shooting range has been overlooked. The current selection of weapons is somewhat lackluster, and despite several updates, the shooting range hasn't seen any improvements. Could you please prioritize an update for the shooting range and its weapons? We'd really appreciate it! Thank you!

Its fun with friends, just goofing around, New update seems good, you can now have modded weapons, without setting up a server. Thats just epic!

"Oh look, a new update for Pavlov, I wonder what it is--"
"... MTX currency. Cool."

Used to be a fun VR shooter, essentially Counter Strike in VR, but the updates have been really bad.
First they removed the Steam Workshop under the pretense of needing a unified modding platform (I'd rather just opt out of crossplay, thanks)
And now they're adding MTX currency to buy skins with, all while providing no other updates that are worth supporting.

Game used to be good, it was abandoned for almost 3 years and now suddenly they are back with micro transaction cringe

pretty good, wish it had more cod like zombies maps but its alright

Really not seeing why this game gets so much backlash, I understand the workshop conundrum, but Pavlov is by far the best VR shooter, and I expect it to remain that way. Contractors or Onward may have some more realistic or detailed mechanics, but nothing will ever beat the Pavlov playstyle. This game is wacky, realistic, unique, and borderline horrifying at times, and there is still an endless pit of mods and communities that you'll come across. 10/10 recommend.