Valve has released a SteamVR beta update that brings improvements to streamed image quality to all supported standalone headsets.
Steam Link is SteamVR’s dedicated streaming app, letting you play your Steam library games on your Meta Quest, HTC Vive Focus, or PICO consumer headset by wirelessly streaming over Wi-Fi.
Now, in a SteamVR blog post, Valve announced the new 2.19.1 beta update brings sharper text, clearer colors, and better detail to VR streaming to those headsets—undoubtedly thanks to the company’s effort to improve Steam Frame’s wireless PC streaming function.
Notably, improvements are said to benefit all streaming VR applications, the SteamVR interface, desktop streaming, third-party overlays, and the theater screen.
Additionally, Valve says Steam Link now defaults to a higher recommended render resolution for streamed PC VR, targeting 1.4 × the headset’s panel resolution.
Color clarity was also improved, using higher-quality filter to downsample color before encoding, preserving fine colored details, Valve says. You can find the full changelog here.
To get the update, users need to opt into the SteamVR beta. To do that, simply follow the instructions below:
With Steam running, navigate to your library.
Right click on “SteamVR” in your library list, then click “Properties” in the context menu.
Select the “Game Versions & Betas” tab on the left.
Select “Beta – SteamVR Beta Update”
If you’re familiar with Steam Link, you likely already have a VR-ready PC. To find out if your PC can handle SteamVR streaming, click here to follow our handy guide.
Meta announced it’s finally sunsetting Quest 2 and Quest Pro, which are slated to receive their final OS update early next year.
Meta VR Glasses is coming next spring, so the company announced it’s pruning HorizonOS development to finally move away from the Quest 2 and Quest Pro hardware.
In a developer blog post, Meta says feature development for Quest 2 and Quest Pro will end with v213, which reaches all Quest 2 and Quest Pro devices by March 2027. As the final OS release, v213 is also the last supported SDK version for these devices.
Moving forward, new OS features, platform capabilities, and APIs released after v213 will only be available on Quest 3, Quest 3S, and newer devices, Meta says. Notably, Quest 2 and Quest Pro were discontinued in 2024.
Based on images courtesy Meta
Quest 2 and Quest Pro will receive security patches and critical bug fixes through the end of 2027. New apps that support Quest 2 or Quest Pro will no longer be accepted after December 2027 however. New titles can still launch on Quest 3, Quest 3S, and newer devices, but they just won’t be offered on Quest 2 or Quest Pro, Meta says.
Still, existing apps supporting both can get bug fixes, content drops, and seasonal events. Cross-play multiplayer also doesn’t have a clear end date either.
Released in 2020, Quest 2 was one of the best-selling consumer VR headsets to date, having sold an estimated 20 million units over its lifetime. Since launch, Quest 2 was also the principal driver Quest Store revenue, with Meta announcing in 2023 the ecosystem had then topped $2 billion in revenue.
In 2022, Meta announced it was releasing its next headset, Quest Pro, which included eye-tracking, a more capable Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ chipset, double Quest 2’s 6GB RAM, pancake lenses, and full color passthrough for mixed reality gameplay.
Despite its advancement over Quest 2, Quest Pro struggled to find a compelling use for its new mixed reality capabilities. Coming in at $1,500 at launch was also widely seen as a major obstacle for adoption, essentially relegating it to an expensive developer kit.
To Meta’s credit, the company eventually reduced the price of Quest Pro to $1,000 a year later—the same year Meta released Quest 3, which sported many of Quest Pro’s most impressive features at about half the price, making it the obvious choice for consumers and developers alike.
Sony appears to be winding down PSVR 2 sales, as the company has removed its PS5-compatible VR headset from the PlayStation web store.
The News
PSVR 2 stock is drying up, as the headset has recently gone missing from both Sony and online retailers across the web.
At the time of this writing, Sony no longer sells PSVR 2 its PlayStation Store in the US or Japan.
Some regions still show the headset in stock, including the EU and UK. In Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the PlayStation Store simply points to third-party retailers.
Road to VR has collected a timeline of data from multiple pages showing that Sony began removing PSVR 2 from its direct.playstation.com store starting around mid-October.
Created by Road to VR
Additionally, Amazon availability of the PSVR 2 Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle and the PSVR 2 non-bundle began to waver earlier this year, but have now all but flatlined. The chart above shows Amazon US availability of the non-bundled PSVR 2 SKU.
At the time of this writing, the only remaining stock for PSVR 2 at stores like Best Buy and Walmart is being sold at sizeable markups ($750 at Best Buy), which is notably only available via third-party resellers.
We’re only about three weeks away from Black Friday. Companies typically reserve large stocks of popular items around that time so they can advertise nation-wide discounts across multiple retail channels.
That only works when a company is confident in their product’s future, which doesn’t really seem to be the case for Sony heading into the 2026 holiday season.
Is this the death knell for PSVR 2? If it is, I wouldn’t find it particularly shocking. While Sony hasn’t spoken officially on the matter, it’s rumored the company never resumed production of PSVR 2 after its initial pause in March 2024, which was reportedly done as a result of low sales volumes following the headset’s launch in February 2023.
Courtesy Sony
Even if the rumor isn’t true, it’s pretty clear Sony wrote off PSVR 2 long ago. Just one year after launch, Sony shuttered its London Studio, which created VR action-adventure game Blood & Truth (2019), and reduced headcount at Firesprite, the studio behind PSVR 2 exclusive Horizon Call of the Mountain.
Schell Games, the veteran VR studio behind spy-themed puzzle series I Expect You to Die and Among Us 3D, confirmed it has laid off 40% of staff in effort to stay afloat.
“We’re very sad to say that due to this challenging time in the game industry, Schell Games has found it necessary to lay off a significant number of employees in order to ensure a sustainable future for our studio,” the studio announced in a LinkedIn post on Saturday. “While this will enable us to stay stable moving forward, it is incredibly painful as we are losing some fantastic talent.”
CEO Jesse Schell later confirmed the studio has laid off “about 40% of the studio.” While the exact number of employees affected is still unknown, this follows a layoff round in August—the studio’s first in its 20+ years in existence—which saw a 10 percent reduction of staff.
Although the studio hasn’t specified the exact number of employees affected, this follows a layoff round in August—the studio’s first in its 20+ years in existence—which saw a 10 percent reduction of staff.
At the time, Schell said that about 125 staff remained, suggesting 50 employees were involved in the most recent round, leaving the studio at 75.
Multiple positions at the studio have been affected, including Unity & Unreal Engine Engineers, Game Artists, Game Designers, Sound Designers, Producers, Game Marketers, IT Support Specialists, Educational Game Researchers, Quality Assurance Specialists, and Product Managers.
Schell Games is best known addition for the I Expect You to Die trilogy and Among Us 3D (previously Among Us VR before adding flatscreen support). The studio was also behind rogue-like hack-and-slash Until You Fall, horror-themed VR puzzle game Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire, and Project Freefall, a free-to-play party game featuring both VR and flatscreen support.
Recently, the studio announced it was releasing Dragon Grove, a mixed reality gardening sim for Quest 3/3S and Meta VR Glasses, slated to arrive in Spring 2027.
VRChat is currently weathering a sizable backlash among users due to a controversial decision to not label AI-generated content.
The News
VRChat released a survey earlier this month asking users whether the social VR platform should in some way label AI-generated content as a way to fight back against low-quality slop.
The survey in question polled over 21,000 users. While results are no longer viewable online, Japanese outlet Automaton reports that around 95% of survey responders indicated they wanted VRChat to add an AI-generated content label, which would simplify filtering out AI content.
In a statement last week, the studio announced it won’t be implementing the change, maintaining the move may cause more harm than good:
“We’re not adding an ‘AI-generated’ label or AI filters. While we think some creators would honestly label their content, we think others would try to pass off generative or assisted work as completely authored by hand,” VRChat says. “Likewise, we could see this creating ‘sleuthing’ behavior, where folks would attempt to sniff out ‘AI’ content or might harass other creators, even if they are genuinely not using any AI tools in their workflow. We think this potentially creates negative behavior spirals we don’t want to encourage.”
Instead, the company has vowed to ban what it calls “AI-generated inaccurate thumbnails” used to advertise worlds. It’s also adding a way to like and dislike worlds, and a way to provide feedback on worlds within VRChat.
Courtesy Valve
While an obligatory ‘AI content’ label is not longer in question, the studio says it’s still debating on whether it will offer an optional ‘Human-authored’ mark that creators can apply when publishing:
“We haven’t decided yet. If we do, it’d be optional, it’d only show on the world’s detail page, it wouldn’t affect discovery ranking, and a missing mark would never be an accusation or something you can report. We lean toward a ‘Human-authored’ mark over an ‘AI-generated’ label. As it stands, saying you used AI can feel like a confession.”
As a consequence, users have taken to Steam to ‘review bomb’ the app. At the time of this writing, VRChat now has a ‘Mostly Negative’ review rating of ~4,000 users, putting it at a 33% positive rating over the past 30 days. This has pushed its overall lifetime rating from ‘Mostly Positive’ to ‘Mixed’.
The current rash of negative reviews however pales in comparison to the studio’s 2022 decision to add anti-cheat software to prevent users from using modified versions of VRChat. That resulted in over 33,000 negative reviews in July 2022, according to SteamDB info, with ~8,000 more added in the following month. You can read more about that here.
My Take
Making content generation easier is a blessing and curse. Creatives can jump in and make something without needing all of the requisite knowledge of how to use Unity or Blender, which can result in something that otherwise wouldn’t exist. That also unfortunately means a rush of slop, AI-generated or otherwise, which VRChat users know has been an issue for a while now.
And VRChat’s creators are a big part of its identity. For many of the long-term users, it’s not just about what avatar you have or what world you built, but how you actually got those things.
For some, AI-generated content devalues this; it erodes what made the OG users attracted to the platform in the first place, because human-made things feel more earned, and the communities that grow around them feel more authentic.
For others, AI is simply one of many tools they use to create their art, and painting them with the same brush as someone who knowingly creates slop is unfair.
It’s not binary, although whatever your stance, world generation will eventually become even easier—Google’s Genie 4 is attempting just that. And VRChat is probably considering the long-term consequences of forming a stance on AI too early in its development, raising the question: how long will an ‘AI-generated content’ label really be relevant when AI is in everything?
EXOSHOCK is a Halo-inspired co-op shooter for up to four players that we’ve been waiting on since it was announced last year. Now, you can find it on Quest and PC VR headsets.
Last we heard, Exoshock was initially targeting a Fall 2025 launch, although developer POLARITYONE was admittedly only a two-person team at the time. It’s had a number of open betas and playable demos, which has helped shape the game to what it is today.
Exoshock is a hybrid game, where VR and PC players are able to play together in the same game, offering up firefights in a gritty sci-fi universe. Here’s how the studio describes it:
You are a Division 9 operative, owned by the Basilisk Group. Board starships in transit, sabotage systems, steal data, and eliminate targets. Gear up, complete your Contract, get out, and return for another.
Enemies flank, suppress, and push your squad. Reload under fire, strike with melee, and cover your teammates. Find an opening and turn a desperate fight around.
The action is set across three starships of varying sizes, including “some of the largest maps ever built for VR,” the studio says. That includes semi-procedural objectives, six Resistance levels, and Contract Complications, meaning no two runs are the same.
The studio says its road to 1.0 is currently focused on making the initial experience deeper, richer and more replayable, with plans to expand the game through Weapons 2.0, deeper Characters and VR Embodiment, expanded environments, additional enemy factions, an evolved Combat Director, new cooperative objectives, expanded progression, and further improvements to audio and world building.
Estimated to be in early access for 12 months, the studio says it additionally plans to continue improving multiplayer, performance, stability, quality of life and overall polish throughout development.
You can find Exoshock in early access over on Steam for PC and PC VR headsets and on the Horizon Store for Quest 3/3S, priced at $20.
Legendary movement shooter Titanfall 2 (2016) has been available in VR for almost a month now thanks to CircuitLord’s unofficial VR mod. With a recent update, you’ll also now be able to go head-to-head with other hardcore VR fans in online multiplayer too.
Created by mod maker CircuitLord, the Titanfall 2 VR mod already included a list of near-VR-native tweaks for its single player campaign when it released late last month. Pretty impressive for a free VR mod—available through CircuitLord’s mod installer.
Now, CircuitLord’s Titanfall 2 VR mod is running an open multiplayer beta, which includes both NA and EU servers. You can check it out in action below:
The Titanfall 2 VR mod has already received high praise for its comprehensive reworking of game’s controls for VR, including interactive weapon reloading for every gun in the game, a gesture-based reload for weapons like the Wingman, and a good translation of its admittedly intense locomotion, which lets you wall-run, dash-slide, and swing your way around the map with a grappling gun.
What’s more, the Titanfall 2 VR mod is free: just bring your own copy of the game, make sure your have a VR-ready PC in addition to basically any PC VR headset that supports OpenXR.
