Last year’s Steam Dev Days event gave us a small glimpse at the future of VR, albeit through the eyes of others as reporters weren’t allowed into the event. Sadly, it doesn’t look like Valve will be offering another such glimpse for the next two years.
Valve’s Tom Giardino this month noted that Dev Days will not be returning in 2017, and likely won’t in 2018 either. The past few events have been held in the company’s hometown of Seattle, Washington.
Definitely not in 2017 and not very likely for 2018. What sort of things would you want to hear about at any future Valve events or talks?
— Tom Giardino (@tomgvalve) September 25, 2017
In fairness, consumer-facing announcements aren’t what Dev Days is really about. As the name suggests, it’s more about getting developers in to attend talks and workshops on developing and selling games. That didn’t stop Valve from teasing a first look at the upcoming SteamVR Knuckles controllers last year, though, and there’s usually some updates on the Steam platform as a whole. In years past, the company has also invited the likes of Oculus (long before the reveal of the HTC Vive) and others to speak on VR at the show.
That doesn’t mean Valve won’t have any announcements to make for the next two years, though. With Knuckles controllers on the way, improved SteamVR base stations in development as well as three full VR games in the works, we’re likely to hear plenty of exciting news from the company in 2018.
It’s not like we’re short on upcoming VR events, though. Next week sees Microsoft and Google hold their own events in which they’ll likely discuss the latest on their work with the technology, and then Oculus Connect will be held the week after that. It’s going to be a busy month.
