Ghostbusters VR – Now Hiring was one of the stranger side roads to come out of the 2016 movie era. Sony first turned that reboot universe into a mobile VR app, then expanded the idea with PlayStation VR releases later on.
That means it never became a major console Ghostbusters game in the usual sense, but it absolutely counts as one of the franchise’s more distinctive experiments. It wanted players to handle the gear, explore the firehouse, and bust ghosts in first-person VR, which is a pretty understandable Ghostbusters fantasy to chase.
The tech was a little clunky. The idea, though, made sense.
Release, developer, and credits
- Initial release date: October 12, 2016
- Later releases: PlayStation VR content released in 2017 and 2018
- Platforms: iOS, Android, PlayStation 4 / PlayStation VR
- Price at mobile launch: $4.99
- Publisher / production: Sony Pictures Virtual Reality / Sony Pictures
A Ghostbusters VR app built around the 2016 movie world
At launch, the mobile app let players explore the movie firehouse, reassemble a proton pack, bust a ghost, trap it, and interact with the containment setup in VR. It was built for phone-based viewers like Google Cardboard and Merge VR Goggles, which instantly dates it to that brief stretch when studios were eager to turn movie tie-ins into low-barrier VR curiosities.
The PlayStation VR expansion
The project later branched into PlayStation VR with Ghostbusters is Hiring: Firehouse and the later Act 2: Showdown release. That gave the overall project a stranger history than people often remember: it started as a mobile VR app, then gradually became a more substantial headset-based experience with its own episode structure.
Why it is worth remembering
- it was one of the clearest Ghostbusters first-person VR experiments
- it let players handle gear and move through Ghostbusters spaces directly
- it grew beyond a one-off mobile tie-in into a multi-release VR project
- it captures a very specific 2016-to-2018 moment in licensed VR history