Walmart Levels Up: Shopping in a Video Game?

Walmart is diving deeper into the gaming world with its new interactive miniseries, Walmart Unlimited, on the Spatial platform. This three-part video game allows players to buy real-world products without leaving the virtual space. The first installment focuses on food brands like A Dozen Cousins and Partake Cookies, with future episodes shifting to beauty and lifestyle products. Thanks to Walmart’s collaboration with game engine Unity, a built-in shopping feature lets players order and ship items directly to their homes, blending gaming with e-commerce in a way that feels seamless.

This initiative is part of Walmart’s broader adaptive retail strategy—using digital spaces to make shopping faster and more immersive. With Gen Z consumers already comfortable navigating virtual worlds, Walmart is betting on their preference for online convenience over traditional in-store experiences. The company has tested similar activations on Roblox and Zepeto, but this new effort targets an older demographic (18+) on Spatial, bringing a more mature audience into its virtual commerce ecosystem.

Beyond selling its own products, Walmart is making a play to expand its reach within Spatial. By offering its proprietary software development kit (SDK) to game developers, the company is inviting other brands to integrate shopping into their games, potentially turning Spatial into a full-fledged retail hub. While brands like Chipotle and Ralph Lauren have sold virtual items in gaming spaces before, Walmart is pushing the envelope by ensuring those digital purchases translate into physical deliveries—blurring the lines between gaming, commerce, and everyday shopping.

Full story at AdAge.