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The Verge editor Sean Hollister, who spent three weeks beta-testing Valve's new Steam Frame headset, hosted a live subscriber Q&A answering questions about the device, its controllers, accessory kit and the Arcturus Vision Camera. He also confirmed the headset left no red mark on his face despite extended wear during a photoshoot.
Valve's new $1,059 Steam Frame VR headset ships with a native ARM64 version of Half-Life: Alyx, letting the 2020 PC VR game run standalone on the device's Snapdragon chip without needing a desktop PC. The port preserves mods and save files and, according to Valve, was made possible by combining the headset's eye-tracking-driven foveated rendering with 16GB of VRAM.
Valve has set official pricing for its Steam Frame headset, which plays flat and VR games locally or via streaming from a PC: $1,059 for the 256GB model and $1,299 for the 1TB version. Every unit ships with a copy of Half-Life: Alyx, now natively ported to run on the device. Buyers must first join a waitlist by September 17, with a lottery determining who gets early purchase access starting September 18.
The Verge's review details weeks of testing Valve's new $1,059-$1,299 Steam Frame, a wearable PC positioned as more than a VR headset—an attempt at a full spatial computing device for playing flat Steam games alongside VR titles. The reviewer praises its comfort and lightweight design but reports frequent crashes, disappearing controls and audio, and full power failures during use.
Gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally run full PC operating systems—SteamOS or Windows—so they suffer from the same software buildup issues as desktop computers. Periodically restarting these devices can resolve problems like game crashes, frame drops, lag, and audio glitches by clearing background processes and giving the system a fresh start. Valve itself lists restarting as an early troubleshooting step on its official Steam Deck support page.
Developer FamBoy32-dev released LiveHaptics, a free app that routes a PC's system audio into the Steam Controller's rumble motors, letting hearing-impaired users feel movies, music and games as vibration patterns. The tool works on Windows and Linux, supports USB, Bluetooth and Valve's wireless receiver, and processes audio through a per-channel DSP chain before converting it into a haptic pulse stream.
Starting September 9, Australian law requires online game and app storefronts to verify that buyers are over 18. Steam is meeting this requirement by asking users to link a bank card rather than submit government ID or biometric data, mirroring the approach it already uses in the UK. Credit cards work reliably since Australian issuers only give them to adults, but debit cards—often held by minors—only pass verification under narrower conditions tied to specific bank and network flags.
Former Valve writer Chet Faliszek revealed that a 2009 trailer for Left 4 Dead 2, widely reported at the time as leaked footage, was actually deliberately released by Valve itself. The company took this route after the ESRB refused to approve the trailer for official release, citing its graphic violence, gore, and crude language.
Sonoff introduced a new Thermostatic Radiator Valve (TRV) at IFA 2026, a smart device that screws directly onto a radiator's valve pipe and connects via Wi-Fi to an app. Priced at $35, it displays temperature on a color screen and supports Celsius and Fahrenheit units.
SteamDB, the widely used Steam analytics and database site, has been sold to Chosen, the company behind Nexus Mods. Co-founder Pavel Djundik said running the site solo had become unsustainable after burnout following years of increasing workload since launching it in 2013 with Marlamin. Chosen CEO Victor Folmann said the site will be commercialized through partnerships and affiliate links rather than ads, while preserving what makes it useful to users.
California's Assembly passed Bill 1856, amending the Digital Age Assurance Act to exclude operating systems and software meant to be freely copied, redistributed or modified from mandatory age-verification requirements. This shields most Linux distributions, though derivative projects with proprietary layers like Valve's SteamOS may still need to comply. The bill also fixes the DAAA's overly broad definition of 'user' and restricts sharing of age data to law enforcement requests.
Roughly 12 terabytes of data from Valve's old Steam2 backend, covering games published between 2003 and 2013, has surfaced online after being left exposed in a public repository. The trove reportedly includes prototype builds like an early version of Left 4 Dead with a different HUD, materials tied to the canceled Half-Life 2: Episode 3, and files from non-Valve titles such as Grand Theft Auto 5. Content creators covering Valve say no hacking was involved, and only game data was exposed, not player information.