Five years later Half Life: Alix Valve, which changed expectations for VR games, remains a quiet yet critical force in the industry. There is little fanfare, but it continues to form the VR landscape through steady updates to STEAMVR, integration with standalone headsets such as Quest, and whispers of new hardware and games. Now as a 5th anniversary Alix Passes, questions are getting bigger than ever. Is the valve still all in VR or is it slowly retreating from the frontier that helped define it? This is what we know.
All we need is a small global pandemic and Boom! – is.Half Life: Alix I’m 5 years old. It felt like a couple of years for many of us.
In fact, the pandemic has almost completely postponed the release of the game. Half Life: Alix It was launched in March 2020. This is the same month that many in the US began issuing stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of Covid-19. Many businesses were confused all night. People lucky enough to have a business model that can be done remotely had to scramble to figure out how to turn gears while business isn’t normal.
This includes Valve Software, the developer Half Life: Alix. If the lockdown hit a few weeks ago, the company said it was very likely that it disrupted the launch of the game. In fact, the pandemic has now started canceling companies only. Half Life: Alix Press Preview event. Luckily, the game has come out of the door, which is still scheduled for release date March 23rd.
Half Life: Alix Not as “the best VR game” or “the best one” but welcomed by many half life“It’s a game, but it’s also one of the “best games of all time.” Five years later, the game holds the 24th spot on the list of all Steam rated games on Steam250.
But Valve doesn’t just create one of the best VR games ever. The company’s “Index” VR headset has become a long-lasting choice for PC VR. Don’t forget that Steam’s comprehensive VR support has become a lifeline for the PC VR industry over the past five years.
Despite this impact on the shape of the VR landscape, Valve has been very quiet about the planning of the category over the past few years. There were essentially zero official announcements of major plans (such as new VR games and headsets).
So, what Valves up to VR – Anything? This is what we know.
What’s next for the VR valve?
For one, we should not ignore that SteamVR continues to be the singular and most important PC VR platform ever. The company has been slowly making meaningful updates to SteamVR for many years. The biggest addition in recent years came at the end of 2023 when the valve was unexpectedly launched Steam Link The Quest Headset app makes it even more convenient for quest users to play Steam VR games wirelessly from their PCs.
And the valve doesn’t seem to be complete Steam Link. Recent Data Amy from a Trusted Source points to companies working on launches Steam Link New headsets such as HTC’s Vive Focus headset and Bytedance’s Pico headset.
Additionally, Valve appears to have more plans to improve its wireless PC VR in its standalone headsets. The references in recent valve software refer to “SteamVR Link Dongle.” This is increasingly expected to become a USB device for creating a dedicated wireless link between the user’s PC and the headset.
Currently, if you use steam links, the headset must be connected to the router and the router must be connected to the PC. If you’re playing inside one or two routers, it probably works well. However, for people with sub-per wireless setups (or those who want to crank the bandwidth to the maximum for the best quality), it is not uncommon to see connection-related quality issues such as stud and pixelation.
Assuming it works as expected, the SteamVR link dongle creates a direct connection between your PC and your headset. This means that not only will the router intermediary be cut off, but it also has a wireless connection of known features that allow the valve to fine-tune things for the most seamless PC VR experience. Datamining suggests that the dongle uses Wi-Fi 6E.
It is unclear whether the SteamVR Link Dongle supports third-party headsets like Quest, or if it is designed as an accessory for Valve’s long-standing “Deckard” headsets.
VR headset next to valve
After the launch of the index in 2019, Valve’s first serious hint was working on a new VR headset in the form of a patent filed in 2020.
It has been five years since these patents were first published. Also, there is no conclusive announcement that the new headset is working, but even though it is happening with Valve Time™, cues drip and data mining efforts from Valve itself suggest that the company is still actively working on new VR headsets.
A few months ago, a 3D model of a previously invisible VR controller was shot with a recently updated SteamVR file, as it was designed to be designed for Valve’s next headset. The controller not only offers new hope that the valve is still working with a new VR headset, but it is also suggested in the way the headset is placed.
Valve’s “Deckard” headset (which may be branded as “Index 2”) is considered to be a standalone headset that streams content from a host PC running SteamVR, primarily. This is essentially the same thing that people using Quest Headsets and Steam Links use today.
However, the leaked Deckard controller layout has a traditional layout with D-PAD on the left and four face batons on the right, allowing VALVE to place the headset of a VR game and play flat screen VR content on a huge virtual screen.
After all, SteamVR already supports playing flat screen games with a large virtual screen. But because almost all VR controllers today are not like that very Mirror standard gamepads, input compatibility is not guaranteed. This means that if you want to play a VR game before moving to flat screen games on a virtual screen, you may need to set up a VR controller and pick up the gamepad.
If Deckard controllers stick to traditional GamePad layouts, it could be much easier for players to move between VR and flat screen games and move again.
More recently than Controller Leak, Leaker, who revealed accurate information on many projects unique to past valves, claims that the valve’s next headset will be released in 2025 at a price of $1,200.
While we cannot confirm that claim independently, there is at least some evidence that it may not be a complete farce at all.
After establishing itself as a reliable source of valve-related information for years, Dataminer’s Brad Lynch revealed a new reference to “Deckard EV2” in the latest release of SteamVR last week.
The EV2 probably refers to the second “engineering verification” device. This suggests that the headset is approaching production. Certainly there could be an EV3 or EV4, but according to Lynch, Valve’s Steam Deck Oled Handheld went to production after reaching EV2. He further says, “I’m very confident this year (Valve’s next headset) will be revealed.”
Valve’s Next VR Game
Half Life: Alyx has returned to universal acclaim, close to early 2020. Five years later, this is one of the biggest and most sophisticated VR games ever made. Still, it is unclear whether the company is happy with the game’s sales performance compared to the time and resources needed to make it.
Whether Valve promises to create another VR game of that scale is still an open question. But here is what we know.
Last month, the same valve leakage agent that the Deckard headset claimed to be released in 2025 would be planning to ship games and demos “already done” specifically for Deckard.
This coincides with the details of Tyler McVicker, a longtime valve data miner who previously discovered important details Half Life: Alix It took several years before the game was released.
A year ago, McVicker said he found evidence that Valve was building another VR game along with working on Deckard headsets. Also, while Valve has many major IPs, McVicker believes the company’s next VR game will be another entry in the Half-Life series. Or maybe two Technically, it’s an entry in the series.
McVicker believes that half of the game will be an asymmetric cooperative game where half of the game will be built for flat screen players on PC and the other half will be built for VR players.
“The computer player has always been Gordon Freeman, and the VR player is Alyx Vance. These two characters were the idea that VR players experience the Alyx story, PC players experience the Gordon story, and both experience the collaborative elements,” he said.
Perhaps Valve sees the game as a cohesive experience that brings together two modern hardware projects. Steam deck and deckcard?
On Valve’s side, the company is not ready to confirm or reject work on a new headset or VR game. We contacted the company and asked if there was anything to share about future VR plans for the 5th anniversary. Half Life: Alix.
“We don’t have anything new to share now, but (…) we really enjoyed seeing all the cool experiences people created and uploaded to half-life: Alyx Workshop.” The road to VR.
Valves are different from most other companies
There are some things that are worth understanding about valves that make all of the above contextual. The company has a new “flat” management structure that is not shared by peers of the same weight class as Valve. Compared to most companies, Valve gives employees a lot of freedom to decide what the company will build and release.
As explained in the Valve Employeeing Handbook, it mainly encourages company employees to choose which projects to choose and to participate. If an employee wants to work on something but can’t help others build it, the project probably won’t go anywhere.
But once the project gains traction, the group construction is generally made up of people who truly believe in what they are building. Aside from having financial resources to pay for world-class talent, this is the main reason Valves outweigh their weight class despite having a relatively small workforce compared to their industry peers.
Valve may not release new headsets or VR games every year, but the steady improvements to SteamVR and some hints of something that is sometimes brewed behind the scenes is because there are still some groups who really believe VR is worth building.
