Valve considered developing a new virtual reality game for the Steam Frame headset but ultimately opted to focus on porting Half-Life: Alyx for its standalone capabilities. This decision, according to Valve staff, was driven by a desire to leverage existing VR masterpieces and gain crucial insights into optimizing performance on new hardware.
While Valve has a history of bundling new hardware with fresh game experiences, such as Aperture Desk Job for the Steam Deck and The Lab for the Valve Index, the Steam Frame's primary VR showcase is a standalone version of Half-Life: Alyx. This choice has raised eyebrows among those who might expect a completely new title for such a significant hardware launch. However, Valve developers explained that pursuing Alyx as a standalone experience provided distinct advantages.
Pierre-Loup Griffais, a SteamOS developer, noted that the team's focus was on ensuring the broader Steam catalog would function well on the new hardware. "We decided to focus on just making sure the Steam catalogue as a whole would be a good experience, and trying to put most of our efforts into that compatibility," Griffais stated. He believes that existing popular VR titles like SuperHot VR and Beat Saber can serve as excellent introductions for new users.
Robin Walker, a Valve programmer, offered another perspective: the process of adapting Half-Life: Alyx to run effectively on the Steam Frame's internal hardware yielded invaluable technical knowledge. "When you're building a new piece of hardware and there's a whole bunch of new software in that software stack, and there's drivers and all that sort of stuff, having a clear target is incredibly useful for you to make the tradeoffs," Walker explained. He emphasized that Alyx, due to its complexity and scope, was a far more beneficial target for testing and optimization than a smaller tech demo like The Lab.
Engineer Autumn Aston added that the work involved in getting Alyx to run on the Frame uncovered numerous bugs and performance issues within the driver software. "All the fixes we got in for Alyx, the vast majority of them are applicable to basically anything that's running on the Frame," Aston said. Valve is now sharing this expertise with other VR developers through the Steam Frame Verified program, aiming to improve game compatibility across the headset's standalone mode.
Walker also recalled that, about 18 months to two years prior, the idea of running Half-Life: Alyx natively on the Steam Frame seemed "faintly ludicrous." The game was not designed with the performance compromises necessary for such a low-power mobile chipset. However, advancements in foveated rendering and eye-tracking technology, coupled with the Steam Frame's 16GB of RAM, made the endeavor feasible. "If that had been 12GB or 8GB, there was not even really. It was just it would be much less interesting to us," Walker commented on the importance of the memory capacity.
The significant RAM allocation, a factor contributing to the Steam Frame's substantial price, was ultimately instrumental in enabling Half-Life: Alyx to run on the headset using its unique features. While the prospect of a new Valve game might be preferable to some, the effort invested in making Alyx a standalone experience promises broader benefits for the Steam Frame's gaming ecosystem.