SteamDevDays: Day 1 Round-Up

[Pikminiman]

Ever since learning about Valve’s developer-only conference Steam Dev Days back in October 2013, the internet has wondered what interesting new revelations might come from the no-press-allowed event. Luckily for those of us not in the developer community, some attendees have been contributing to a slow drip-feed of news via Tweets and attached photos.

Gabe kicked off the event yesterday with a brief welcoming address, in which he stated Valve’s goal of breaking down the bottlenecks that make it difficult for developers to get their games on Steam. Ultimately, the goal is eliminate Steam Greenlight entirely in favor of more direct developer access to the Steam storefront.

Several highlights of the first day include:

• As we mentioned yesterday, Steam has recently surpassed 75 million active users, with the community growing by a total of 15% in the last three months of 2013 alone.

• Valve’s Steam Controller will no longer have a touchscreen. Instead, it will have a D-pad and ABXY buttons to help with backwards compatibility with pre-existing X-input-enabled games, and more changes to the controller based on beta feedback are coming. Furthermore, the controller will run off AA batteries, and up to 16 controllers can be used on a given system simultaneously.

• Every attendee at Steam Dev Days is receiving a free Steam Controller and Gigabyte-brand Steam Machine.

• Steam Machines will focus on other living room media in addition to gaming, which is still the primary focus.

• It was confirmed that Valve are working on their own virtual reality headset, independently of the Oculus Rift. After the conclusion of the Day 1 event, several developers came forward to discuss Valve’s own VR prototype, which is currently being shown off at the event. It has, so far, been very well received, with some developers claiming it “blows Oculus Rift away”.

• Valve announced that they will sell Steam Controllers through the Steam Store as well as in retail stores. Unfortunately, Valve have confirmed that the release dates and price points for the Steam Controller remain undecided at this stage.

• Alienware announced that their Steam Machine will be launching by the holiday season and will use Intel Haswell processors alongside Nvidia graphics chips.

• Steam will be adding 12-13 new supported currencies in 2014, vastly expanding Valve’s global empire.

• Steam plans to allow direct monetary transfers between Steam Wallets in 2014.

• As we discovered in the second Valve JIRA leak on September 1st 2013, Kelly Bailey (the music composer for the Half-Life series) is confirmed to be back at Valve.

And as always, we’ll be sure to make more daily round-ups as the news continues coming in.

 

[M.λrdλ]

Nice job! Can't wait to see day two's sum up!

 

[DEATH eVADER]

The interesting bit is when they said that Steams VR actually surpasses Oculus, but in the same slide thay mentioned they were not planning on releasing their own and they have been working with OCR on positional tracking.

I guess Valve's own research is going into Oculus' own prototype and that it will drive up quality in the finished product.

 

[MFL]

I would be very surprised if Valve did not in some way have some stake in the OR.

 

[Eejit]

Yes, maybe even indirectly like via enhanced support in SteamOS.

 

[MFL]

I meant financially.

 

[Aizawa]

Kelly Bailey is back! Also they mentioned Source 2 on of the charts like its already officially announced which I found a little strange.

 

[Hardy_P]

I guess Valve's own research is going into Oculus' own prototype and that it will drive up quality in the finished product.

That would be really great, even if the research doesn't go there it would be nice with some competition for the VR-industry.

 

[Omnomnick]

Kelly Bailey is back! Also they mentioned Source 2 on of the charts like its already officially announced which I found a little strange.

It kind of is, it just hasn't been shown or discussed in much detail yet. Gabe mentioned it to a group of people who visited him at Valve for his 50th birthday.

 

[SteamEmpire]

It kind of is, it just hasn't been shown or discussed in much detail yet. Gabe mentioned it to a group of people who visited him at Valve for his 50th birthday.

I have a good feeling we might see a source 2 game this year

 

[Aizawa]

yeah I saw that and as you said "it kind of is" and so I find it strange, dunno. Maybe after all this Hardware stuff, they will finally show something about Source 2 whether its with L4D3 or HL3.
After all there is no game from Valve for 2014 yet

 

[ríomhaire]

The interesting bit is when they said that Steams VR actually surpasses Oculus, but in the same slide thay mentioned they were not planning on releasing their own and they have been working with OCR on positional tracking.

I guess Valve's own research is going into Oculus' own prototype and that it will drive up quality in the finished product.

I'm guessing that Valve's VR prototype was some sort of "what is the absolute best we can do" thing while the Oculus Rift actually has to be an affordable, mass-produceable consumer product so it's not terrible surprising that it'd be better.