Valve

About Valve

Valve is a privately held game developer and platform company in Bellevue, Washington, founded in 1996. It made the Half-Life, Portal, Counter-Strike and Dota series, and it runs Steam, the largest PC game store. VR is a long-running part of its business. Valve developed the SteamVR Tracking system (often called Lighthouse) and licensed it to other headset makers.

VR hardware

Valve released its own headset, the Valve Index, in 2019. It paired 144 Hz displays with finger-sensing controllers and base-station tracking. Valve ended Index production in October 2026. Its newer headset is the Steam Frame, a standalone headset running SteamOS that went on sale in September 2026. It plays Steam games on its own and streams PC games wirelessly with eye-tracked foveated streaming. Valve's hardware line also includes the Steam Deck handheld.

VR software and platform

SteamVR is Valve's PC VR runtime and the VR section of the Steam store. It supports headsets from many brands, including Meta Quest headsets through Valve's Steam Link app. Valve's best-known VR game is Half-Life: Alyx (2020), which is often cited as a benchmark for VR game design.