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takyon writes:

The Half-Life effect on PC-VR is the biggest Steam has ever seen

On Friday, Valve revealed the biggest jump ever in virtual reality use on its SteamVR platform: a 0.62 percent increase of all Steam users. This jump between March and April 2020, unsurprisingly, coincides with the first Steam Hardware Survey to include players of the megaton VR exclusive Half-Life: Alyx.

If that percentage tally sounds ridiculously low, remember that the last public announcement of all Steam users came in January 2019, at a count of 90 million. That number has likely grown quite a bit since then, owing to factors like free-to-play games attracting more users over that 15-month span. If we agree with estimates like Road to VR's count of roughly 141 million Steam users in April 2020 (as determined by an exponential trendline with an r-squared factor of 0.922), then that "0.62 percent increase" would mean a one-month jump of over 870,000 active VR users.

[...] These survey results could have played out differently if Valve and Oculus alike hadn't struggled to keep up with VR headset sales demand; both companies' flagship VR systems have been sold out or back-ordered at major retailers for months, particularly while anticipation for Half-Life: Alyx began mounting. As of press time, it's still impossible to buy systems from either company directly from their site and expect immediate shipment; Oculus lists nothing but "sold out" notices for all of its kits, while Valve lists a minimum wait of eight weeks for any Index-affiliated hardware.

The increase was from 1.29% of all Steam users in March to 1.91% in April.

Related: Every Classic Half-Life Game is now Free on Steam

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