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Why Steam VR?

xavier4or
Explorer
Newbie question here - I see several discussion wrt Steam VR games - but trying to figure out what are the advantages?  Are there unique VR games available via Steam that you can't get via Oculus store?

I checked a few of the popular ones and they seemed to be listed both in Oculus store and Steam.

Thanks!
59 REPLIES 59

BadDanME
Expert Protege
You can get many more games on steam vr than in the oculus store.

HiCZoK
Protege
It's just different store. You can make a shortcut to steamvr in oculus home which launches automatically

CrashFu
Consultant
Well, unlike Oculus, Steam doesn't do any kind of curation / quality-testing / bother to see if a program even works before they allow it to be sold on Steam nowadays, so they have a lot of stuff that just isn't good enough to make it onto OH (or other game platforms).

So if you're really eager to play some half-assed college-kid projects that were rushed to completion to rip-off better games, then sure, check out Steam VR.  But anything on there that's actually worth playing is either already on Oculus, or soon will be.
It's hard being the voice of reason when you're surrounded by unreasonable people.

BadDanME
Expert Protege
Wow, what a fanboyanswer. There are enough good vr-titles on Steam, that are not on the Oculus Store. Also a lot of Vivegames, that run fine on the Rift. 
But stick to your limited options, if that is what you like most.

xavier4or
Explorer
Thanks!  Any good Steam VR games to check out that aren't on Oculus store?

BadDanME
Expert Protege
If you are into driving: Assetto Corsa, RaceRoomRacingExperience, rFactor 2, Euro Truck Simulator.

Some Sportsgames: Eleven Table Tennis VR, Everyday Golf VR, The Golf Club VR, The Thrill of the Fight.

Different things:  Soundboxing, Redout, Accounting, Belko VR, The Lab

lensmandave
Superstar

xavier4or said:

Thanks!  Any good Steam VR games to check out that aren't on Oculus store?


Check out The Solus Project  🙂
Intel Core i7 6700K @ 4.5GHz. Asus-Z170-PRO MB - Nvidia RTX 3080 ti - 16GB DDR4 2666MHZ HYPERX SAVAGE.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

BadDanME said:

Wow, what a fanboyanswer. There are enough good vr-titles on Steam, that are not on the Oculus Store. Also a lot of Vivegames, that run fine on the Rift. 
But stick to your limited options, if that is what you like most.


It isn't a fanboy answer, it's the truth. Trying to dismiss his argument with name-calling just makes you look childish and uninformed. Oculus does require more due diligence before publishing in their store, similar to Apple and their App's.

Personally I do find Steam to be utter garbage; I felt that way before VR came along. I always prefer to buy and own games outside of Steam. That's why I'm happy that Blizzard Entertainment has all their games inside of their own Battle.net client and store.

I own a small number of VR titles on Steam (5 or so), but I own over 30 in the Oculus Store. If there is a VR game on Steam that I want to own, I will typically wait until it eventually becomes available on the Oculus Store. It has nothing to do with fanboism, and everything to do with Standards. For many reasons I find the Steam experience to be highly sub-par.

Steam is like the big bargain bin box in the middle of Target or WalMart 😄

Anonymous
Not applicable
There are some GREAT titles on Steam that aren't available in the Oculus Store but not that many. Unfortunately Valve don't curate their Store - AT ALL - and haven't done so for YEARS. The majority of VR games or even games in general on Steam have been godawful.

I'm developing a VR game that isn't going anywhere near Steam because I don't want my game being lost in a huge sea of shite, particularly because I'm planning on having all of the proceeds going to cancer research.

As @Zenbane has said it all comes down to Standards and all games in the Oculus Store meeting certain criteria (what they actually call Standards Testing in the industry when you're developing a game for any console). Submitting a game to Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and now Oculus and passing Standards Testing and Functional Testing is essential to get your game released for those platforms. Lead Testers always hate Standards Testing for some reason but I always found it quite easy.

You get a checklist and if you think your game passes all of those checkmarks then you submit it to the platform holders. Nothing could be simpler and so many games fail Standards testing. It was thanks to me that the PSP version of Champ Man (can't remember what version it was now!) passed Standards Testing because the Lead Tester working on that SKU was useless at checking these things. It had failed three times I think and any further failures and retesting would have cost Eidos something daft like 20 grand the next time lol. Luckily it passed on the fourth attempt.

Oculus have a similar thing but even more extreme. If you fail Submission three or four times they ban the developer from submitting any more versions of that game or ANY OTHER GAME WHATSOEVER IN THE FUTURE. 😮

Valve have been doing VR a lot of harm by letting any old crap on Steam as long as it has VR in the title and things haven't improved since they started this Steam Direct thing in June either.