Half-Life: Alyx Added 1 Million New Monthly VR Players To Steam

Half-Life: Alyx was one of the most anticipated VR launches ever, and now it's got the numbers to back that hype up. Thanks to data crunched by Road To VR, we can now see just how big Alyx's impact on the VR market was, with a dramatic spike in the number of VR headsets connected to Steam in the month of April.

The data tracks the number of VR headsets that are connected to Steam within a given month--so while it can't tell us whether they were actually used or not, it's a close enough metric to look at active VR users.

The figures from the monthly Steam hardware survey show that 1.91% of Steam users connected a headset during the month of April, and thanks to Road to VR's tracking of these stats we can tell what a big jump that is--it's triple the spike in VR connections that happened over the December-January holiday period.

While some of the increase may be related to players alleviating boredom and keeping active in isolation, and not be solely due to Half-Life: Alyx, it's likely that the first Half-Life release in over a decade still had a big impact.

The GameSpot review of Half-Life: Alyx praised how VR was made integral to the game, saying, "the very concept of VR becomes the core narrative device--your hands, and by extension, Alyx's actions, are fundamental to the delivery of its best moments."