// PC GAMER — GAMING
The Steam Frame launches during one of the slowest periods for VR on Steam, but Valve hopes to 'rekindle the excitement' for PCVR
"We also want to grow a healthy ecosystem for both the gamers and the game developers."
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There was a time when VR was pretty much exclusive to the PC. I'm talking about when the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift were the pinnacle of technology, circa 2016. I have very fond memories of those two headsets, often borrowing them from friends and colleagues, then ferrying them around to various spots to evangelise the new and exciting world of VR; VR that was then entirely tethered to a gaming PC. Then came the Oculus Go, later the Oculus Quest, and all of a sudden, VR was mobile.
There's a lot of unique VR content that can only be accessed with the capabilities and power of the PC and the experimentation that comes on it.
It took a while before standalone VR headsets really took off. It wasn't until the Quest 2, and later Quest 3/Quest 3S, that these headsets started to dominate the conversation around virtual reality. Nowadays, these three dominate the Steam Hardware Survey for August 2026, accounting for over 60% of headsets plugged into a PC by those surveyed. The Valve Index, which launched in 2019, remains in fourth place. Few new arrivals in PCVR get anywhere close: the Bigscreen Beyond has just 1.25% of the share, which is less than the original Vive.
Many are using standalone headsets to play VR games powered by their gaming PC, hence being registered on Valve's survey at all. So, in a sense, there's still so much to play for on PC.
"Some of the other mobile devices, like the Meta Quest, for example, are some of the most popular headsets on Steam," says Jeremy Selan, a software engineer at Valve who worked on the Steam Frame. "So there is a real draw with PCVR even today amongst the millions and millions of VR headsets out there, and that's, I believe, because there's a lot of unique VR content that can only be accessed with the capabilities and power of the PC and the experimentation that comes on it."
Yet it'd be fair to say that the market has shifted attention away from PCVR experiences. I've had a look around SteamDB at the number of VR games that are released on Steam every year, and it's not a positive trend.
The number of VR games on the platform reached peak around 2017, and since that time, it's either remained flat or dropped with each subsequent year. By SteamDB's figures, 2025 was the worst year for VR games on Steam for a decade. Just 481 VR games released on the platform, and you have to go back to 2015, prior to the launch of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, to see a lower figure. Compare that to the exponential increase of non-VR games released on Steam each year, and it looks like VR has struggled to maintain a foothold on the platform.
In 2017, VR games accounted for 15% of all game releases on Steam. In 2025, they accounted for just 2%.