It used the same virtualization core as VMware Workstation, a similar program with more features, which became available free of charge for personal, but not commercial, use in 2024.

[6] VMware, Inc. did not formally support Player, but there was an active community website for discussing and resolving issues,[7] and a knowledge base.

In 2015 the two packages were combined as VMware Workstation 12, with a free for non-commercial use restricted Player version which, on purchase of a license code, either became the higher-specification VMware Workstation Pro,[9][10] or allowed commercial use of Player.

By default, changes (including proxy settings, passwords, bookmarks, installed software and malware) made in a VM were saved when it was shut down, but the .vmx configuration file could easily be edited to autorevert on shutdown, so that all changes are discarded.

Ready-to-use VMs with Microsoft or Apple operating systems installed, in particular, were not distributed, except for evaluation versions.