Steam Dev Days

Steam Dev Days is a developer conference organized by Valve for game developers who publish on Steam. Valve held it at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle on 15-16 January 2014 and again on 12-13 October 2016. Valve's 2013 event FAQ described the first edition as an off-the-record event, and Game Developer noted in 2016 that the media are not typically invited. Both programs covered Valve's platform plans, including virtual reality.

The VR program of the 2014 conference included Michael Abrash's talk "What VR Could, Should, and Almost Certainly Will Be within Two Years", which set out the specifications Valve considered necessary for presence, and private demonstrations of Valve's prototype head-mounted display in a room covered with tracking markers. At the 2016 edition, which press reports described as having a new focus on VR, Valve showed the prototype controllers that later became the Knuckles controllers and, according to TechCrunch, implied that it would unveil new Lighthouse base stations in 2017.

Reviewed 15 October 2026. Dates, venues, registration terms, attendance figures, session titles and abstracts, Abrash and Ludwig slide contents, 2014 prototype demo details, 2016 controller and base-station reports, 2015 and 2017 statements and the Steam video series checked against the archived and live Valve event pages, slide PDFs and every cited press article. About review dates.

History

2014

Valve's 2013 event site described Steam Dev Days as "a two-day game developer's conference for video game professionals to meet in a relaxed, off the record environment". Planned topics included game economies, VR, Linux and OpenGL, and user-generated content, and attendees were promised hands-on time with SteamOS, prototype Steam Machines and Steam Controllers. Registration was by emailed invitation code through Eventbrite, with a fee of US$95 per registrant, and the FAQ answered the question of press registration with "This is an off the record event." Sessions ran from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific Time and were recorded.

In November 2013 Valve published the VR sessions on the schedule. Road to VR and Engadget reported that Abrash's talk would include a prototype VR headset that a few randomly selected attendees could try, and that Joe Ludwig would present Valve's plans for VR in Steam.

Attendance figures differ by source. Game Developer, PCWorld and MCV reported about 1,200 developers; a guest report on Road to VR said more than 2,000 delegates attended. According to that report, the first day dealt mainly with content for Steam and the second day with VR. Outside VR, Valve showed a redesigned Steam Controller without the central touchscreen, with face buttons in a diamond layout, and Gabe Newell told developers in his welcome address, "Our goal is to make Greenlight go away." Game Informer reported Valve as saying it was "keeping VR in mind while developing the controller." PCWorld reported that Intel gave each developer in attendance a Gigabyte Brix Pro Steam Machine.

Valve recorded 28 sessions and posted them to YouTube in February 2014.

No conference in 2015

In January 2015 Valve said there would be no Steam Dev Days that year. Its statement, quoted by MCV, said: "This year our focus will be a bit different, so we are planning a larger than usual presence at GDC." Valve added that it "will certainly consider doing it again in the future."

2016

Valve announced the second conference in June 2016 for 12-13 October in Seattle. The event page listed the venue as the Washington State Convention Center, 705 Pike St., and named four topic areas: virtual reality ("What's new for SteamVR, features, game design and technical discussions"), Steam hardware, Steam business and marketing, and Steam Workshop and user-generated content. MCV described the VR track as covering development for the Vive and SteamVR.

Game Developer wrote that after "taking some time off" the event was back "with a newfound focus on VR", and that "members of the media are not typically invited to Dev Days". The welcome address was given by Valve's Greg Coomer. VR sessions included Joe Ludwig's "Philosophy of VR", a talk by Epic Games' Tim Sweeney on "The Future of VR and Games", Ben Jackson's "SteamVR Hardware" talk on SteamVR Tracking, a panel on developing The Lab, talks on Unity and Unreal Engine 4 VR development, Nat Brown's "Delivering Great VR With Simple Graphics", and a VR developer panel moderated by Valve's Chet Faliszek with speakers from Stress Level Zero, Northway Games, Audiosurf and I-Illusions. Valve's Jeff Bellinghausen, who presented the Steam Controller session, said at the event that Valve was "on track to sell a million by early next year".

After 2016

In September 2017 Valve's Tom Giardino wrote on Twitter that there would be no Steam Dev Days in 2017: "Definitely not in 2017 and not very likely for 2018", as reported by Road to VR and PCGamesInsider. As of October 2026, Valve's Steam Dev Days page on Steam Community still lists the 2016 program.

Editions

Edition	Dates	Venue	Main VR content
2014	15-16 January 2014	Washington State Convention Center, Seattle	Michael Abrash's presence talk and demonstrations of Valve's prototype headset; Joe Ludwig's "Virtual Reality and Steam"; Palmer Luckey on porting games to VR; Owlchemy Labs on Oculus Rift development
2016	12-13 October 2016	Washington State Convention Center, Seattle	Prototype controllers later known as Knuckles; second-generation Lighthouse base stations indicated for 2017; sessions on SteamVR Tracking, The Lab, Unity and Unreal Engine VR development

VR at Steam Dev Days 2014

Michael Abrash's talk

Abrash's slides argued that presence, "the sense that you are really someplace else", required a combination of factors, none sufficient on its own: a wide field of view (at least 80 degrees), adequate resolution (1080p "works"), low pixel persistence of no more than 3 ms, a refresh rate high enough to avoid flicker (95 Hz "seems to be sufficient"), a global display, good optics and optical calibration, tracking of both position and orientation, and latency of 20 ms motion-to-last-photon ("25 ms may be good enough"). He described a "feasible 2015 consumer HMD" with these figures:

Parameter	Value in Abrash's slides
Latency	20 ms motion-to-last-photon
Pixel persistence	3 ms
Refresh rate	95 Hz
Field of view	110 degrees
Resolution	1K x 1K per eye
Tracking	Millimeter-accurate translation, quarter-degree-accurate rotation, volume of roughly 2 meters cubed

The slides stated that Valve had built prototypes to this specification, believed the technology could transfer to consumer-priced headsets, and would share its findings with PC companies that wanted to develop VR hardware. They named Oculus VR as "the obvious candidate" to ship such a device, called the DK1 "a good first step, but not good enough" and Crystal Cove "a big step in the right direction", and said Valve and Oculus had collaborated on tracking. TechCrunch summarized the talk as an estimate that "compelling, consumer-priced" VR headsets would arrive within about two years.

Valve's prototype demonstrations

Valve demonstrated its internal VR hardware to some attendees in private demonstration rooms. In an account published by Road to VR, Cloudhead Games called its session "an incredible 30 minute demo" and described "a bright room covered in printed tracking targets" with an orange rug of roughly 8 by 4 feet on the floor, a headset with custom-cut lenses and two 1080p panels (one per eye, in portrait orientation), and a small camera on top of the headset. Among the features that "completely sold it", Cloudhead named "complete 360 degree, volumetric positional tracking". Valve told attendees it had no intention of making its own commercial VR hardware, "yet". In a blog post after the event, Oculus VR said it had tried the demo and called it "one of the best VR experiences in the world", and thanked Valve for its "collaboration and support in developing the tech behind Crystal Cove."

VR support in Steam

Joe Ludwig's "Virtual Reality and Steam" covered the Steam Overlay in VR, Steam store changes for VR and Valve's VR plan for Steamworks. His slides showed Steam Big Picture in a VR mode, the Steam overlay running over Half-Life 2 in VR, and a Steamworks VR API that sat between a game and hardware SDKs such as the Oculus VR SDK. The API covered display geometry, distortion compensation and head tracking, with a new call, IsSteamRunningInVR(), for games to detect VR mode. The slides gave its intended goals as future-proofing for new hardware and software and letting one device be shared by several applications, and answered "When?" with "Within a few weeks".

Other VR sessions

Palmer Luckey of Oculus VR gave "Porting games to Virtual Reality", on best practices and technical hurdles drawn from Oculus's work with developers. Devin Reimer and Alex Schwartz of Owlchemy Labs gave "Wild West of VR - Discovering the Rules of Oculus Rift Development", based on making AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaCULUS!!!; its abstract listed respecting the player's head direction, reducing motion sickness and reversing UI and HUD conventions among the lessons.

VR at Steam Dev Days 2016

At a keynote on 12 October 2016 Valve showed images of new SteamVR controller prototypes, and a prototype was available to try at the show. UploadVR reported that one design fitted over the back of the hand so that a user could open the hand fully to drop a virtual object, and that the controller reportedly sensed finger positions. Cloudhead Games, which showed a demo of Call of the Starseed, said its code worked with the new controllers "right out of the gate". TechCrunch reported that Valve implied it would unveil new Lighthouse base stations in 2017. Road to VR later summarized the 2016 event as the one that showed the Knuckles controller prototype and teased a second-generation Lighthouse base station.

The program's SteamVR Tracking session said Valve was making the tracking system "fully available to other companies, without licensing fees", and the session on video content on Steam listed upcoming 360-degree and VR video support among planned features.

Session recordings

Valve posted the 2014 sessions on its Steamworks Development YouTube channel and on the event site, along with slides for most talks. On 3 November 2016 it released a free "Steam Dev Days" video series on the Steam store that "contains the sessions and panels presented at the Steam Dev Days conferences".

See also

• Meta Connect
• Oculus Connect 1
• Game Developers Conference
• SteamVR