Valve Announced That Its SteamVR Headset Will Be Free for Developers

Since Valve and HTC teamed up to make their VR headset, nobody but them could toy around with it. Now it seems that Valve and HTC are planning to offer the development kit for the HTC Vive for free to developers.

Valve’s Dough Lombardi has stated that the dev kits will be free in the early stages of the hardware’s life cycle and that developers of every size will be able to sign up for the kits very soon. The dev kits are said to start shipping this spring, having a retail release expected at the end of the year.

The move seems a bit awkward, but it does make sense from two perspectives. One is that it will prevent curious consumers from purchasing the dev kit for recreational purposes and the other could indicate that Valve and HTC will not hint at a retail price for the VR headset based on its development kit price. However, it remains to be seen how many dev kits will actually ship and how many developers will receive the VR headset.

In the end, this is great news for existing virtual reality developers since they could get their hands on the HTC Vive without any additional cost. This might also mean that a lot of games or demos might be popping up by the end of the year that have support for the VR headset.

Thank you Polygon for providing us with this information