EVE: Valkyrie

EVE: Valkyrie
Information
VR/AR	VR
Developer	CCP Games (Newcastle studio)
Publisher	CCP Games
Platform	SteamVR, Oculus Rift (Platform), PlayStation VR
Device	HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, OSVR, PlayStation VR
Operating System	Windows, PlayStation 4
Type	Full Game
Genre	Action, Space, Sci-fi, VR
Input Device	Gamepad
Play Area	Seated
Game Mode	Online Multiplayer, Cross-Platform Multiplayer, Co-op, Single Player
Language	English
Rating	Teen
Review	Mixed
Release Date	March 28, 2016 (Oculus Rift); October 13, 2016 (PlayStation VR); November 17, 2016 (Steam, HTC Vive)
Price	US$59.99 (Founder's Pack, launch); no longer sold
App Store	Oculus Store, PlayStation Store, Steam
Website	https://www.evevalkyrie.com/
Infobox Updated	12/11/2016

EVE: Valkyrie is a multiplayer space dogfighting game for virtual reality headsets, developed by the Newcastle studio of CCP Games and set in the universe of CCP's online game EVE Online. It grew out of a tech demo shown at CCP's EVE Fanfest in April 2013 and launched on 28 March 2016 alongside the consumer Oculus Rift, with a free copy of its Founder's Pack included with Rift pre-orders. A PlayStation VR version followed on 13 October 2016 and a Steam version for the HTC Vive on 17 November 2016. Players on all three headsets could play together online, and CCP called it the first three-platform multiplayer VR game.

The game is played seated with a gamepad, from the cockpit of a fighter, and is built around team battles between human pilots. CCP supported it with a series of free updates through 2016 and 2017. The September 2017 update Warzone made VR optional on PC and PlayStation 4. Weeks later CCP stepped back from VR development, and the Newcastle studio was sold. CCP announced the end of support on 1 July 2022, the game was withdrawn from sale, and its servers were turned off on 5 August 2022.

Reviewed 21 October 2026. Checked release dates, prices, platforms, modes, updates, Warzone, studio changes, shutdown and reception summary against CCP releases, the official site, store pages and contemporary press. About review dates.

Gameplay

The player is a pilot of the Valkyrie, a band of outlaw pilots in the lawless regions of New Eden, the setting of EVE Online. In the story, a man known as Fatal has been using illegal technology to copy the minds of dying fighter pilots into cloned bodies. Rán Kavik, one of the first pilots revived this way, broke away after learning that the notorious Guristas, who she believed had saved her, had in fact killed her; she now leads the Valkyrie against her former clan. Rán Kavik is voiced by Katee Sackhoff, known for her role in Battlestar Galactica.

Ships are flown from a detailed cockpit view with a standard gamepad; at launch the game was designed around the Xbox One controller, and on PC it also supported HOTAS flight sticks. Lock-on missiles are aimed by looking: the player holds the missile button and keeps the target in view with head movement, without an on-screen reticle. At launch the ships were divided into three classes, Fighter (assault), Heavy (tank) and Support (healer), each with its own progression and experience points. Experience earned for each class unlocked new ships and upgrades; unlocked ships were assigned to launch tubes much like loadouts in other shooters. Silver earned after each battle and Salvage collected from destroyed enemies were used for crafting upgrades. Ships could also be customized with paint, decals, upgrades and weapon choices. Players could fly solo or join squads of up to five.

Multiplayer modes

Team-based multiplayer between human players was the core of the game, with matches of eight against eight. The modes described by CCP's lead game designer Andrew Willans in August 2016 were:

Team Deathmatch: each side tries to use up the other team's clone reserves by scoring kills.
Control: teams fight over three capture points, taking each by deploying a drone near it.
Carrier Assault: teams fight over three objectives, and taking two of them briefly disables the enemy carrier's shields; attackers then destroy its cooling nodes and finally fly down a central trench to strike the exposed core.

A co-op mode, added in October 2016, puts a team of players against AI pilots matched to their skill level and still awards experience.

Chronicles

The single-player Chronicles section contains:

Recall: narrative missions that tell the backstory and introduce multiplayer features.
Scout: free exploration of the maps without enemy attacks, with hidden "Echoes" that reveal background lore and Salvage containers to find.
Survival: waves of AI enemies at Novice and Pro difficulty, on all maps.
Training: obstacle courses, practice for ship abilities and a test arena filled with AI ships.

Development

The game began as a side project by a small group of CCP developers, built in the studio's "20 percent time" for personal projects. Called EVR (also written EVE-VR), the Unity-based space combat demo for the Oculus Rift was shown at EVE Fanfest in Reykjavik in April 2013, where attendees could play it. At the time CCP had no plans to release it.

After a strong reaction from fans, CCP announced on 21 August 2013 that it had begun development of EVE: Valkyrie as a multiplayer dogfighting game for PC with Oculus Rift support, made by its Newcastle studio, with a release planned for 2014. CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson said that what had started as a passion project "became one of the most highly anticipated games of the year". At Fanfest 2014 in Reykjavik, CCP announced that the game was moving from Unity to Unreal Engine 4 and had been redesigned for the new engine.

In December 2015 Oculus announced that the game would be bundled with pre-orders of the consumer Rift. CCP also demonstrated it on PlayStation VR at that month's PlayStation Experience and confirmed a PlayStation VR version.

Release

The Rift version launched on 28 March 2016, the day the consumer Rift went on sale, together with CCP's arcade shooter Gunjack. Rift owners who had pre-ordered the headset received the Founder's Pack free, and it was also sold separately for US$59.99 on the Oculus Store. The PlayStation VR version launched with the headset on 13 October 2016 at US$59.99 for the Founder's Pack, on the PlayStation Store and at retail, with online play against Rift players on PC.

Before a Vive version existed, some HTC Vive owners ran the Rift version through the Revive compatibility tool, which still meant buying it with an Oculus account and playing online through Oculus Home. CCP released the game on Steam for the HTC Vive on 17 November 2016, at US$59.99 for the Founder's Pack. Like the other versions, the Steam release required a gamepad. The Steam Founder's Pack contained a "MkV Wraith" fighter, a "Vanquish" flight suit and 2,500 Gold, and for a limited time buyers also received a copy of Gunjack.

On 8 June 2017 the price was cut permanently on all platforms, from US$60 to US$40.

Platform	Store	Release date	Notes
Oculus Rift	Oculus Store	28 March 2016	Rift launch title; Founder's Pack free with Rift pre-orders, US$59.99 separately
PlayStation VR (PlayStation 4)	PlayStation Store and retail	13 October 2016	PlayStation VR launch title; US$59.99; included the Joint Strike update
HTC Vive and other SteamVR headsets	Steam	17 November 2016	Gamepad only; US$59.99
PC and PlayStation 4, VR optional	Oculus Store, Steam, PlayStation Store	26 September 2017	Warzone expansion; free for existing owners, US$29.99 for new players

Updates

CCP released the game's major updates free of charge to existing owners and included each in later versions of the game.

Update	Release	Main additions
Carrier Assault	20 June 2016 (Rift)	The three-stage Carrier Assault mode, the Crossroads map, the Echoes, Salvage and Survival single-player missions, Boost Gates that increase speed on multiplayer maps, match completion bonuses, ship balance changes and AI improvements
Joint Strike	10 October 2016	Cross-platform play between Rift and PlayStation VR, the co-op mode against AI pilots, two new single-player story missions, a communications wheel for quick messages to teammates, daily challenges, a statistics menu and more ship customization options
Gatecrash	7 December 2016	The Gateway map, built around an unfinished warp gate with warp points that throw pilots from one end of the map to the other; pilot helmets and suits bought with in-game currency; higher resolution, dynamic shadows, improved particle effects and faster loading on PlayStation 4 Pro
Wormholes	15 February 2017	The Wormhole mode, in which anomalies change the visuals and rules and give preset ship loadouts, with a new Wormhole event planned every weekend; an alpha of the Valkyrie League; HOTAS flight stick support on PlayStation 4
Groundrush	11 April 2017	Solitude, the first ground-based map, on the rocky surface of a remote planet; Carrier Assault and Control added to co-op; new Wormhole variations; official Steam Controller support; pilot victory and defeat animations; English subtitles
Warzone	26 September 2017	Play without a headset on PC and PlayStation 4; see below
Winter Update	12 December 2017	Custom Matches on official dedicated servers with pass codes, private invites and a server browser; a Spectator Mode for tournaments; the Moon Refinery map; Tobii and TrackIR head tracking for non-VR players, including look-to-lock targeting

Warzone

CCP announced the Warzone expansion on 15 August 2017 and released it on 26 September 2017. It removed the VR requirement on PC and PlayStation 4, so players with and without headsets could fight in the same matches, and it combined players on Rift, Vive, PlayStation VR, non-VR PC and non-VR PlayStation 4. Existing owners received it free, and the complete package was priced at US$29.99 for new players. Andrew Willans described the update as giving every pilot access to all ships from their first visit to the clone vat. The previous 23 flyable ships gave way to a smaller set of loadouts in four classes (Assault, Heavy, Support and a new Covert class whose ship, the Shadow, has a temporary cloak), with modular per-ship progression and "Ultra" abilities charged by collecting Salvage. Warzone also added the Extraction mode, a capture-the-flag variant that mixes combat with navigation, and two maps: Fleet, at a Sisters of EVE space station, and Outpost, at a Drifter base. Gold was removed, Silver was reduced, and the Valkyrie League was paused until a new version could be made. The Warzone release has its own article, EVE: Valkyrie – Warzone.

End of development and shutdown

On 30 October 2017 CCP announced that it was stepping back from VR. It closed its Atlanta studio, which had made the PlayStation VR sports game Sparc, and said its Newcastle studio would also be affected, with about 100 employees involved in total. CCP later said Newcastle would be sold as a going concern rather than closed. The Newcastle team finished the planned Winter Update, and CCP said that a team in London would then maintain EVE: Valkyrie and Sparc and that both would stay playable. In January 2018 the Newcastle team of 34 staff moved to Sumo Digital, with executive producer Owen O'Brien becoming studio director.

On 1 July 2022 CCP announced that it was discontinuing support for the game to focus on new titles in the EVE universe. The game was removed from sale; on 5 August 2022 its servers were turned off, its social media profiles were closed, the official website went offline and customer support ended. As of October 2026 an unofficial, fan-run project, which states that it is not affiliated with CCP, was testing community-run servers for the PC version; it requires an existing installation of the game.

Reception

Critical reception was mixed. Aggregate review scores were around 70 out of 100 for both the PlayStation 4 and PC versions, with most reviews either positive or mixed. Reviewers praised the sense of presence in the cockpit and the head-tracked missile lock, which one review described as something that could never have worked outside VR, and some called it one of the most polished games available when the headsets launched. The main criticisms were the small amount of structured and single-player content, a learning curve that was steep for newcomers, problems with the story, and the progression system and microtransactions. Many player reviews named the US$60 launch price as a problem before the 2017 price cut.

Warzone received few reviews. Some reviewers considered it the definitive version of the game for VR players and a competent space shooter without a headset, while another found that the non-VR mode lost much of the immersion and precision of playing in VR.

Features

System requirements

These were the PC requirements listed on Steam in 2016 and 2017. A gamepad was required (Xbox One and Xbox 360 controllers were supported on PC), HOTAS flight sticks were compatible, and the game needed a broadband internet connection.

Windows

Minimum

OS: Windows 7 SP1 or newer
Processor: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 390 equivalent or greater
Storage: 20 GB available space