VR Bangers co-founder Daniel Abramovich steps back from the CEO chair as eight-year company veteran Oleg Simakov takes over a 140-person, ten-brand VR porn empire — and fans are left wondering what happens to the most quotable man in immersive adult
LOS ANGELES — November 9, 2026 — VR Bangers has a new CEO, and for once the announcement doesn’t involve a scent, a resolution figure, or a piece of hardware that may or may not exist.
The company behind VRBangers.com, VRPorn.com and a sprawling network of eight other adult brands confirmed Thursday that Oleg Simakov — a Vice President inside the organization for more than eight years — has been elevated to Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. The move ends the CEO tenure of co-founder Daniel Abramovich, who has run the shop since he and Boris Smirnoff first pitched the idea of VR porn in 2014, back when “VR” mostly meant a cardboard fold-out and a phone.
The company is framing it as evolution, not upheaval. “This appointment allows us to build on the foundation we’ve established while bringing fresh energy and focus to our next stage of growth,” Abramovich said in a statement. “Oleg knows our business, our people and our vision better than anyone, and I couldn’t think of a better person to lead the company forward.”
Notably, nobody at VR Bangers is saying Abramovich is going anywhere. He remains co-founder and remains the public face quoted in the company’s own press materials. But the operational keys — day-to-day management, strategic execution, team development, and oversight of a portfolio that includes ARPorn.com, Dezyred.com, AIPornX.com, BlowVR.com, VRBGay.com, VRBTrans.com, VRConk.com and VRSmash.com — now belong to Simakov.
The man who never met a superlative he didn’t like
For anyone who has followed VR porn for more than five minutes, the personality shift is the story. Abramovich has been the genre’s most reliable quote machine for a decade, and his press releases have always read less like corporate communications than like a carnival barker who genuinely believes his own pitch.
He is the man who, in 2018, sold a $299 headset attachment called “Smell VR” that let users sniff dropper bottles labeled Teenage Dreams, Squirt Delight, MILF Sensations and Happy Ending while wearing a headset. The four aromas, the company claimed, were each composed of unique mixtures of “thousands of different scents,” developed with “the best perfumers and olfactologists,” powered by a “prototype scent generator” and “patented technology” that would “stimulate tactile sensations” — a phrase that, if you think about it for more than a second, describes exactly nothing.
The attachment only worked with VR Bangers’ own proprietary headset. It was bundled as a package deal. All 500 units “sold out” in what was, by any measure, suspiciously convenient timing. And the descriptions themselves, courtesy of Abramovich in an interview with Vice, remain the most gloriously unhinged product copy in sex tech: Happy Ending had “a real vagina smell,” MILF Sensation went heavier on perfume, Squirt Delight carried “a slight scent of a woman squirt,” and Teenage Dream was “a natural hair smell with a pinch of sweet perfume.”
Whether you could actually smell any of it through a plastic nozzle is beside the point. It got written up everywhere. That was the job.
“World’s first” as a business model
The pattern repeated with resolution. In 2023, VR Bangers announced “the world’s first 12K VR porn movie,” starring Ryan Keely, with Abramovich promising the company would “keep on pushing the limits of this tech even further.” There was precisely one headset on earth with a 12K screen at the time — the Pimax Reality 12 — and it wasn’t generally available. Reddit users immediately found the file shipped with an H.264 codec most rigs couldn’t chew through. The three scenes that followed the 12K debut were all back at 8K.
He’d been running that play since 4K, and he knew it. “We have repeatedly managed to raise the production standards in the market by pioneering VR porn videos in 4K, 6K or 8K UHD,” he said at the time — a sentence that is true, and also a reminder that the man has spent a decade shipping a number before the hardware to display it existed. To his credit, he has never pretended this is anything but spectacle: in 2022 he announced “metaverse integration” and 20 new developers hired to build a virtual space where fans “could actually meet and discuss VR porn and/or even have sex in virtual reality with each other.” Nobody has ever fully located that space. Nobody has fully stopped wanting it either.
He was also, unfailingly, a snob about the tech in a way that made for great copy. On PlayStation VR’s launch: “If you’re really thinking that 1080p movies in a 180-degree field of view can be called a TRUE VIRTUAL REALITY, then you must’ve lost your mind.”
And when he built a literal helmet-mounted camera rig, he called it “the first ever head rig of its kind” and predicted fans who liked the previous one would “fall in love” with this one. It was an enhanced version, he said, “in every way.”
What Simakov inherits
Strip out the theater and the underlying operation is real and large: more than 140 employees, ten brands spanning straight, gay and trans VR, an interactive game platform in Dezyred, an AI porn arm in AIPornX, and VRPorn.com as one of the genre’s main distribution hubs. That is what Simakov, 48 hours into the job, now runs.
“I’m incredibly honored to step into the CEO role,” Simakov said. “Over the past eight years, I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside an extraordinary team and help build something truly special. I’m grateful for the trust placed in me and excited to continue strengthening our brands, empowering our people, and exploring new opportunities that will shape the future of our business.”
Translation for the paying customer: expect more process, less provocation. Simakov’s résumé is operations — business processes, team development, cross-platform expansion — not stunts. Abramovich’s sendoff, meanwhile, was written like a man who knows he is the product: “Having worked closely with him for more than eight years, I’ve seen firsthand his ability to take on challenges, lead people, and consistently deliver results.”
No timelines were given for Abramovich’s future involvement, no departure was announced, and no one at the company would confirm whether the founder’s fondness for a headline survives the reorganization.
Which leaves VR fans with the only question that matters to them: does a VR Bangers without Daniel Abramovich in the corner office still ship the occasional absurd, half-true, deeply memorable gimmick? Or does it settle into being merely competent?
Simakov has the harder job either way. Running 140 people is work. Following the guy who sold a bottle of “woman squirt” as a feature is a bit like following a fireworks display with a spreadsheet.
Read the original trade announcement at AVN and the Smell VR writeup at Immersive Porn.
About VR Bangers — Founded in 2014 by Daniel Abramovich and Boris Smirnoff, VR Bangers operates VRBangers.com, VRPorn.com, ARPorn.com, Dezyred.com, AIPornX.com, BlowVR.com, VRBGay.com, VRBTrans.com, VRConk.com and VRSmash.com, with a team of more than 140. The company has released content in 4K, 5K, 6K, 8K, 10K and 12K VR, and once sold a headset that smelled of things.
