Half-Life Alyx Boosted Popularity of VR on Steam for Good
Turns out the rise in popularity of VR caused by Half-Life: Alyx wasn't short-lived. May was a record month in terms of the share of VR owners among Steam users.
Over a month has passed since the release of Half-Life: Alyx. The game's debut caused a rapid increase in the number of VR users on Steam. It turns out that this effect was not short-lived and persists until now.
Such conclusions can be reached by analyzing the May Steam hardware survey, which shows that in the past month 1.92% of users of the service used VR goggles. In April it was 1.91%. This shows that the number of users who regularly use the technology has grown for good.
Completing Half-Life: Alyx takes about 12 hours, so it's not surprising that the activity in the game itself has decreased. Nevertheless, it still remains at a decent level. According to Steam Charts estimates, an average of 1120 users were playing at the same time in May, compared to about 2,000 in April and 7,000 in March.
Interestingly, in April some other large VR games on Steam recorded solid increases. The popularity of Beat Saber increased by 8.7% and Pavlov VR by 2.6%. In turn, Blade and Sorcery gained popularity (by 4.3%) in May. So it seems that at least some of the players decided to check out another VR game offered on Steam after completing Half-Life: Alyx.
The question is how long this trend will continue. There are no more big VR games on the horizon, and over time Steam users may disconnect goggles from their PCs. Although the fan community is busy with mod creation, this will not be enough in the long run.
Half-Life: Alyx was released on March 23, this year. The game is only available on PC. Although it requires VR goggles, the game was warmly received. The project has an average rating of 93% on Metacritic and 98% of user reviews on Steam are positive. The title also delighted our editor, who gave it a 9.5/10.
