Leaker Claims Valve's Deckard Headset Set To Launch This Year At $1200

A Valve leaker claims the Valve Deckard headset is set to launch by the end of this year at $1200, including first-party "games or demos".

The leaker, known as Gabe Follower, has successfully revealed details of multiple unannounced Valve projects in the past, including Counter-Strike 2 and Deadlock.

Now, in a post on X, Gabe Follower claims "several people" have "confirmed" that Valve aims to release its wireless standalone headset running SteamOS, codenamed Deckard, by the end of this year, with a "current" target price of $1200 for the full bundle, which will include first-party "games or demos". Interestingly, they claim this $1200 price will see the product sold at a loss, suggesting Valve intends to pack high-end components and specifications into Deckard.

The claimed leak comes three months after models of Deckard's "Roy" controllers were discovered in SteamVR driver files, revealing their design and inputs. The models included bumpers and a D-pad, suggesting the Roy controllers can act as a gamepad for flatscreen gaming. Gabe Follower claims this ability is a "core feature" of Deckard, and does not require a PC, with the flatscreen games running onboard.

Roy is almost certainly a reference to the antagonist of the movie Blade Runner, wherein Deckard is the protagonist.

Valve Deckard ‘Roy’ Controller Models Discovered In SteamVR

Models of Valve Deckard’s ‘Roy’ controllers were discovered in SteamVR driver files, revealing their design and inputs.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

That Valve is working on a new headset was not just a rumor, even before the controllers leaked. The company has repeatedly confirmed it over the past three years.

In May 2021, well over a year after the launch of Index, Valve President Gabe Newell said the company was "making big investments in new headsets".

In October 2022, Valve posted a job listing for a computer vision engineer to help “prototype, ship, and support” a VR headset for "millions of customers world-wide", with inside-out tracking, camera passthrough, environment understanding, eye tracking, and hand tracking. And in December 2022 Valve product designer Greg Coomer told a Korean gaming news magazine the company has been "working on a new VR headset lately", and that there are "several projects going on in-house".

Most recently, in November 2023 Valve strongly hinted that the headset would focus on wireless VR streaming from your PC, something that datamining had already suggested.

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Valve hinted at its future plans for VR in an interview about Steam Deck OLED.

UploadVRDavid Heaney

Index will be six years old in June, and its SteamVR usage share has been steadily declining since the launch of Quest 3. Valve fans have been crying out for a successor, and many in the industry have hoped it to be a standalone direct competitor to Quest 3. Whether or not Deckard focuses on standalone VR or wireless PC VR, though, remains to be seen.

We'll keep a close eye on the Valve leaker community, and the company itself, in the coming weeks and months for any further hints of a potential 2025 launch of Deckard.