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

Enlarge / How'd the Half-Life: Alyx bump work out for SteamVR adoption? (credit: Sam Machkovech / Aurich Lawson)

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.

The previous record-holder for a one-month jump in SteamVR users came in January 2020, which saw a spike of roughly 0.22 percent. This notable jump in sales followed Valve's Half-Life: Alyx unveil in late November 2019. The April 2020 figure, on the other hand, tracks anyone who had connected a SteamVR-compatible headset to their computer at any point in the 30 days leading to the "early April" period of Steam's automatic survey-gathering process (for users who opt in to the survey). So that period would include HL:A's release as a playable game on March 23. With HL:A in the mix, the one-month jump in percentage points was nearly triple the previous record-holder.

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