The 2020 Steam Winter Sale is now live and you can find every discounted VR title right here. There are some seriously amazing deals this time with some games going as low as 90% off their usual price.
As per usual there are some other gimmicks associated with the sale beyond just cheap PC games. This time they’ve got bird stickers you can claim by participating, as well as avatar frames, profile backgrounds, and more. The first bird sticker is free.
Since there are so many discounted games and everyone’s tastes and preferences vary, especially when it comes to VR, just consider the items listed down below to be my own personal picks of what I think are great value in terms of the sale price vs quality of the game in my opinion.
There are plenty of other games in the sale worth checking out though. Regardless of which genre you prefer or which PC VR headset you have, I highly recommend looking through the full list of VR games discounted during the 2020 Steam Winter Sale and cross-check that with your Wishlist to see if anything is cheap that you’ve had your eye on for a while.
Let us know what you decide to pick up down in the comments below!
Payday 2 developers Starbreeze underwent some major restructuring and changes to the company over the last year.
In a Steam post, Starbreeze CEO Mikael Nermark wrote about the company’s current standing and their plan for future Payday 2 content. Writing about the company’s restructuring, the representative noted that “through extremely hard work and commitment by all of our employees, [they’ve] been able to stay afloat, clean up our business and start thinking about our future and the future of PAYDAY.”
Development was halted on Payday 2 late last year, but work will now resume on some products. We reached out to Starbreeze to ask if they intend to continue to develop and publish VR content, and whether future Payday 2 downloadable content will support VR, as previous DLCs did.
A Starbreeze representative explained they divided the business into core and non-core elements and “VR in general has been defined as non-core…The focus for the non-core businesses has since December 2018 been to make sure that these operations develop in a positive manner, but outside of Starbreeze. In some cases, this has resulted in divestments, or winding up the business.”
A document posted to the Starbreeze website as a mid-year report explains that the company “discontinued” a “VR Park in Dubai” and that its StarVR effort has been defined as “non-core” to the business. Last we heard Acer had taken majority ownership of the ultrawide field of view headset and its developer program was halted, but that was a long time ago and we haven’t seen an update on the hardware since then.
“The next DLC for PAYDAY 2 will be supported in the existing VR offering for the game,” according to the statement from Starbreeze.
Were you a fan of Payday 2 in VR? Let us know in the comments below.
It has finally happened. Wipeout has come to virtual reality (VR). You may remember we used to have that ‘Make It A (Virtual) Reality’ column on VRFocus way back when? I dig it out occasionally on VR vs. to discuss a videogame, film, television programme, etc that would be a good match with the tech. Well, when it came to making an existing videogame franchise in VR, Wipeout was one of those at the top of everyone’s lists. It didn’t just ask for a VR adaption, it screamed it, begged for it. It was one of those titles that when you suggested it the answer was ‘well, yeah obviously’. It was a natural fit.
In fact, that’s pretty much the holy grail for Wipeout achieved now. Leading me to muse on Twitter the other day that the only thing we’ve pretty much got left to hope for in terms of the title is that they somehow add all the extra stuff from the demo used in the film Hackers. Destructible leaderboard and all.
Now Wipeout has come to virtual reality thanks to the PSVR support patch, can we have the stuff from Hackers added next? pic.twitter.com/hT2Hbn7zZJ
This in turn got me thinking about the film Hackers as a whole. Mostly that I should probably watch it again very soon as it was one of my favourite films growing up in the 90s. But it then dawned on me that for a movie which was very much of its time, it also at one point incorporated the VR of its time.
When you think about it, quite a few examples of examples of entertainment have at some stage featured VR, or something akin to it. So, in this little sub-series on VR vs. I’m going to pick three or four examples of where VR crossed over into, or got a reference inm other forms of entertainment.
Before we start though- yes, Star Trek: The Next Generation onwards. Yes, Lawnmower Man. Yes, VR Troopers. I know. Beyond that, though…
Hackers
Dade Murphy, alias ‘Zero Cool’, a.k.a ‘Crash Override’ is in a whole load of trouble. He and his hacker friends are being set up to take the fall for a virus which is threatening to capsize five Ellingson Mineral oil tankers unless a ransom fee is paid. The good news is they’re innocent. The bad news is they can’t prove it and the FBI is onto them. The worst news is that the person behind it all is actually another hacker – one hired by the very same Ellingson Mineral to protect their Gibson computer network as the company’s Computer Security Officer. A role played to wonderous effect by Fisher Stevens who is utterly believable as this overgrown kid/corporate sleazeball Eugene Bellford, known by his hacker handle ‘The Plague’.
The technology showcased is, as I say, very much of its time. In terms of ‘wearable tech’ you could for instance include Dade’s use of a – surely utterly useless – head mounted display (HMD), which has more of a Tiger Electronics R-Zone about it (“HERE COMES WOLF!”) than Google Glass.
However, moving away from that, there’s also the moment where Dade’s nemesis takes on VR itself. Indulging in a little R&R, before he is interrupted by FBI Agent Richard Gill, who is, unwittingly working with Bellford to catch Dade and his friends. It being the 90’s what else would Bellford be using than a Virtuality system?
Someone, actually clipped the scene on YouTube, although judging from the title they didn’t realise just what the system was.
The X-Files
Wait, The X-Files did VR? There’s nothing spooky about that surely. What, are aliens using the black oil combined with DOOM VR, or something? Well, actually yes. No, not the aliens bit but for one episode The X-Files did indeed tackle the subject of VR.
It wasn’t very good.
In the episode First Person Shooter, which takes place in Season 7 of the show’s original run, Agents Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate a futuristic room-scale VR videogame with bio-feedback, that The Lone Gunman have been working on as consultants. Why? Well one of the players was just murdered. Not only are they killed within First Person Shooter, they appear to have been killed for real by a character within the title. Except that the female character who shot the player, ‘Maitreya’, isn’t from the shooter and seems to have a degree of self-awareness.
A famous computer hacker/master gamer is soon called upon to deal with the rogue program, but doesn’t fare much better, his efforts to kill Maitreya sees her lop off his hands with a samurai sword for real before she decapitates him for good measure. Oh dear. Soon the Gunmen are trapped in the game after nipping in the to patch it, Mulder dons sunglasses, body armour and an assault rifle and goes into the First Person Shooter to save his friends. Only for FPS to straight up disappear, leaving the Gunmen safely behind, but somehow Mulder has been taken into the videogameTRON-style and is now a part of it.
It turns out that the character is a pet project of studio’s developer Phoebe, who poured her efforts into making her as a private project to channel her anger and frustrations at having to work day-after-day with a jerk of a boss in a hyper-male environment. “I mean, she was all I had to keep me sane. My only way to strike back as a woman. She was my goddess. Everything I can never be.”
Maitreya has taken her programmer’s desire to “strike back” at men a little too literally, managed to break out of the private computer into First Person Shooter and now offing men because she can. Luckily, Dana Scully is here to do her best “I am no man!” moment, and despite previously scoffing at the videogame, goes into it herself to save Mulder’s ass.
PAYDAY 2
The videogame PAYDAY 2, as you should probably know by this point, does have its own VR mode. As well DOE version that you can enjoy – if you, you know, fly to Dubai. However, what you might not be aware of is that VR appears within the videogame itself too; appearing twice in the guise of the Starbreeze StarVR HMD. This in itself should not really surprise you considering the history of developers OVERKILL and Starbreeze AB. The first instance comes in the form of a heist mask. Yes, you too can go and rob banks, loot yachts and rig election machines whilst wearing a StarVR. The height of crime fashion!
However, the StarVR does also appear in an actual heist. The title’s 2016 Christmas heist ‘Stealing Xmas’ sees the Payday Gang doing another contract for Ukrainian cocaine dealer Vlad. Unfortunately, Vlad has a tendency to give endless chances to his drunken brother-in-law; who at this point in the story you’ve already had to deal with at least once. Said relative has, helpfully, stashed some drugs inside boxes at the mall. When the gang find him initially he is dressed as Santa Claus and tied to a chair in front of a Christmas tree. Some creative wake-up techniques on Boozy Saint Nick later, the gang discover that the boxes have actually been distributed to the stores now and so off they rush to locate the lost product. Vlad threatening repercussions if he does not have a happy holiday.
One of the places that cocaine is stashed is in a technology store… and within the locked away box of a StarVR headset. Vlad is less than impressed about the hiding place.
“VR – Vlad’s Rejoicing. That’s what this means to me.” He says, dismissively. “The VR set is virtually not here. Or should that be actually? I don’t know – which is it.”
The whole thing ends with you blowing a hole in the mall roof and disappearing up into the sky by helicopter, riding a Christmas tree with all the cocaine under it that you’ve… reacquired.
That’s all for now, I think a videogame, a film and a television show is a good spread for the first episode. VR vs. will be back next week. Maybe with more of this, maybe something else. We’ll have to see.
Developer Overkill Software and Starbreeze Studios recent held a livestream for the virtual reality (VR) version of their popular heist videogame Payday 2 to play the title and ask questions.
During the livestream a number of questions were asked towards Tobias,one of the producers on Payday 2 and Payday 2 VR which, when answered, gave some interesting insight into the development of the VR title and what might be coming in the future.
For those who are unaware of Payday 2 VR, this version of the title allows for players to experience the title like never before in a fully immersive way. Once more, the VR version is crossplay with other players on PC even if they are not using VR themselves. This means that friends can get together to pull of heist and play with their preferred method of control, VR or keyboard and mouse. Recently the developers made Payday 2 VR available within the main section of the title and it is available to all who own the videogame, completely free of charge.
One of the main questions that was asked was around the weapons within the title, more so the missing crossbows and bows. The team said: “At the moment the crossbows and bows are not available in VR, we are still looking into the development process there because they need to be handled slightly different then regular weapons because of how a bow actually works so we wanted to take a little extra time with those.” When a viewer raised if they could handle like a throw-able item in VR, Tobias responded by saying: “We are looking into making bows work like proper bows so pull the arrow and shoot like a bow but like i said, we are still developing this and we’re still looking into it.”
This lead onto a question about the possible addition of a new frying pan melee weapon: “I don’t know, we have so many cooking utensils already, with the BBQ pack we got psycho killing knife, spatula, I think we have half a kitchen as melee weapons already. I don’t think we are looking into a frying pan melee weapon at the moment.” Tobias explained.
On a more technical note the viewers asked how Payday VR handled aim assist and if it was different from the non-VR version of the title. “It has a similar system to PC, because it is the same game right. We’re not trying to give a clutch to VR we’re just bringing the systems over with a few tweaks here and there.” This was followed by the question over which of the currently available head-mounted displays (HMDs), HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, were best for the title
“That is going to be very much to your prefer,” Tobias said, “I wouldn’t say that one is better than the other. The ones that we use in house are the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift, so those are the ones we are officially supporting. The development has been on both of these, to make them work to the benefits of how the players usually play on the different headset as that does change. Vive is out of the box room scale, so a Vive player has more tendency to use the dash system where as Oculus plays tend to prefer the joystick movement. So we try to make these feel as functional and balanced as possible.”
One other interesting question that was answered by the team was the if they had any plans to add support for text chat within Payday 2 VR to allow players to respond to their team. Tobias explained: “This is again something we are looking into on how to solve. We have a few different ideas that we want to try for how to solve text chat, at the moment on the tablet you have on your arm, you can swipe to see text chat but there is no way to interact. We are looking into how we can give the VR players some ability to communicate. That is of course a little bit more tricky as a PC plays has a full keyboard in front of them so we will have to look into a solve for how that could work.”
This is only a taste of the content from the full stream which is over an hour long. You can watch it in full over on Starbreeze’s Twitch channel here.
For more on PayDay 2 VR in the future, keep reading VRFocus.
Payday 2 (2013), Overkill’s 4-player bank heist co-op shooter, has offered a VR mode in beta for the past few months, but now it’s off the beta branch and pushed out as a free DLC to the main game.
Payday 2 VR offers users with Oculus Rift or HTC Vive access to the entire game including its bustling userbase – decidedly making it one of the most-populated VR-accessible games out there thanks to its cross-platform support.
Before, owners of Payday 2 had to install the beta branch of the game to give them access to the VR features.
If you don’t already own the game, the only way to get it currently is through one of the Payday 2: Ultimate Edition bundle, which includes a number of previous DLCs bundled into one. If you already have it (or pulled the trigger on the $45 bundle), you simply need to download the Payday 2 VR DLC here.
While the specs say users should at least have a 1GB GPU, this is likely referring to the main game, as the beta suggested at very least a GTX 980 or better to play.
Last November Starbreeze Studios brought its highly popular bank robber videogame Payday 2 to HTC Vive as a beta, allowing VR players to immerse themselves in the crime spree shooter. Today, the studio has announced a brand new update for Payday 2 VR, combining it with the main Payday 2 title so players no longer have to switch.
The update isn’t just merely about integrating the two videogames for ease of use, far more work has gone into it. As Starbreeze Studios explain in a Steam posting: “Nearly the entire game is now unlocked and available to our VR heisters, with a few exceptions that are still in development. Play all heists with just about all weapons that are available in the game. Bring a sniper rifle with a magnified scope to cover your friends from afar, or why not stand on the front line with an LMG and a rocket launcher? Afterwards you could blast into the distance in a Longfellow packed with goats, it’s your choice!”
For example, the sniper rifles have been tuned to make them feel more immersive and realistic, swapping scopes to suit how you play. The inventory belt can be customised with quick access to the weapon switch and melee weapon. Then there’s the new VR skills and perks, with Starbreeze creating differences between VR and non-VR players.
If you’ve been playing the beta since launch you may be worried about how this update affects your save files. This has been thought of, with the team providing the following solution: “If you took part in the Beta you may have noticed that it used a separate save file from the main game. When you start PAYDAY 2 after the update, the game will compare your character levels in both branches, main game and VR Beta. If your progress in the VR Beta is higher than in the main game you will get a prompt to overwrite the progress with your VR Beta progress.”
If you’ve recently picked up a HTC Vive or Oculus Rift headset, own Payday 2 and want to get in on the VR action then its now super easy. Payday 2 VR is now available for free in the DLC list to download. There’s a massive amount of update info on the main Steam listing, and as always, keep reading VRFocus for the latest updates.
Original (11/2017): Red. That’s all I saw. The blood dripped down the walls, bodies were stacked on top of each other up and down the hallways, and the chorus of gunfire echoed through my ears in a hailstorm of death. That was my Payday 2 VR experience.
While Payday 2 doesn’t bill itself as an ultra-violent murder simulator by any means, when you play it in VR it’s hard to experience it any other way.
Payday 2 is an online multiplayer heist game originally released in 2013. You join up with other players around the world, don your fancy mask and elaborate outfits, and make your way through a crime-riddled city as you hit banks, diamond stores, jewelry shops, and everything in between on your quest to grow your stash of weapons and wealth. Remember The Dark Knight’s opening scene? It’s basically that, but as a video game.
The VR feature is an optional, free mode that anyone can opt into during the Beta period right now. When it fully releases it’s expected to be a globally available free update. Currently it’s recommended that you play with an HTC Vive, since that’s the only officially supported headset, but I’d assume support for Rift, Windows VR, and other headsets will come in the future.
As of now the VR features include the entire game. This isn’t a limited Tour mode like we’ve seen in some other popular games, but instead lets you play the full, entire game in VR if you’d like. Payday 2 features both offline single-player (with AI companions) and online multiplayer to indulge your Purge-esque inclinations.
The rhythm of gameplay generally involves picking a loadout with perks and gear that compliment the mission (having someone with a saw is super useful for bank jobs, for example) and then you’ll spend the first few minutes casing the location. Figure out where the exits are, identify guard posts, and see if you can stop someone from sounding an alarm. Once you’re in position and ready to go you just put on your mask and get started.
That’s a lot of bodies. And blood.
While stealth is technically an option, it’s never my first choice — especially when in VR. When I walked up to my first bank I shot the guard in the back and took all of the civilians hostage immediately. This bought us a lot of time to get the drill started in a chaos-free environment.
What ensued after that can only be described as what felt like a scene out of Kill Bill, but with guns instead of swords. My difficulty must have been turned down low, or the VR mode is just easier right now, because it seemed like I was able to absorb an incredible amount of bullets without ever really needing to worry about my health.
The action is intense and there’s a lot to take-in, so Payday 2 isn’t for the squeamish — especially in VR. The only movement method I was able to use was a dash-based teleportation system, similar to that in Raw Data. It worked fine, but I was yearning for a full, smooth locomotion such as in Onward.
The fact that VR support is being added for free is great, so if you have Payday 2 and an HTC Vive there’s really no reason not to check out the VR features as long as you don’t mind a bit of virtual blood on your hands. Let us know what you think down below!
Payday 2 (2013), the popular FPS with four-player co-op, has now updated to include access to the VR beta for HTC Vive. The beta is free, and will see updates in discrete phases, the first of which is now available for owners of the game.
The goal behind the beta is to give players on PC and VR access to the same Payday 2 content. For now though, some weapons aren’t available for VR players, something that will hopefully change in successive beta phases.
Although technically running through SteamVR, the game currently only officially supports Vive, and only renders Vive controllers. Some users have reported that Windows VR headsets work fine as well. Oculus Rift users will have to do an extra step to emulate the Vive’s controller and remap Touch’s buttons however. Reddit user ‘ElectrickMedic’ put together a handy guide on how to install the OpenVR Input Emulator to get the beta working for Rift.
image courtesy Overkill Software
Since June 2017, the game has only been available in its ‘Ultimate Edition’, which includes all the DLC for a total of $45. At the time of this writing, the base game sans DLC doesn’t appear to be available anywhere.
To get access to the VR beta, you’ll have to opt into the beta branch on Steam:
Find PAYDAY 2 in your Steam library and right-click – select Properties. In the Properties window – select the tab called “BETAS”. In the drop down menu in the BETAS tab – select “open_vr_beta” and close the window. This will automatically push the beta branch update. You can opt out at any time by reverting back to the stable branch.
Overkill recommends playing on window 8 or higher and with a
GTX 980 or better.
Back in May developer Starbreeze held a livestream event which saw the studio announce work on a virtual reality (VR) version of Payday 2 for HTC Vive. Since then news on development has been fairly quiet, until now that is. This month Starbreeze will be having a Payday 2 event called Locke and Load and in a teasing tweet seem to indicate a possible VR announcement.
The event begins on Thursday 19th, running until 28th October and in the tweet (seen below) the studio has put several icons indicating what to expect on each day. And what’s that on day four, this Sunday 22nd, well that looks like an image for a VR headset.
Locke & Load heisters! A teaser just went out for this years PAYDAY 2 event, can you figure out what coming from the icon? pic.twitter.com/BTl9dd1hMt
Could it be that the long awaited release of Payday 2 VR – even in a beta form – could be happening in less than a weeks time? That would be the first assumption, and the one most fans of the series would want, as developer Overkill has previously stated that the beta would arrive this year – and it’ll be free. Hence why 5 million copies of Payday 2 were given away during the summer.
If it’s not the beta then it’ll most likely be an update, revealing more details on the VR mode.
Last month Starbreeze Studios held a livestream making several announcements to do with future plans. One of those was the unveiling of PAYDAY 2 VR, a virtual reality (VR) version of its bank robbing title. This VR version will be a free add-on for players who already own a copy of the original 2013 videogame, and now even more will be able to access the title as Starbreeze is offering five million copies for free.
The free deal (PAYDAY 2 normally retailed for £14.99 GBP) is in preparation for the release of the upcoming PAYDAY 2 Ultimate Edition, so if you fancy going on a crime spree in VR for free you can. Currently Starbreeze has confirmed that HTC Vive will support the upcoming version but there’s a possibility further headset could be included. In a press release the studio noted: “The free download will additionally grant current and future compatible headset owners the base PAYDAY 2 VR game for free when it releases.”
PAYDAY 2 VR will feature crossplay support so players team up with their friends on PC. Additionally, those who’ve poured countless hours into the videogame will be able to retain their current characters and stats.
If you’ve not seen PAYDAY 2 its a four-player co-op first-person shooter that lets players carry out crime sprees, from small-time convenience store hits or kidnappings, to cyber-crime or emptying out major bank vaults.
The titleis the work of Starbreeze internal studio OVERKILL which is also working on another VR project called OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead, which has recently been postponed until 2018. Starbreeze also worked with Lionsgate, Grab Games, Big Red Button and GameCo on John Wick Chronicles: An Eye for an Eye, which released for HTC Vive earlier this year.
The beta for PAYDAY 2 VR is expected to start during the autumn of 2017. For any further updates on the videogame and Starbreeze AB’s VR plans such as eSport title Storm, keep reading VRFocus.
The technology showcased is, as I say, very much of its time. In terms of ‘wearable tech’ you could for instance include Dade’s use of a – surely utterly useless – head mounted display (HMD), which has more of a Tiger Electronics R-Zone about it (
A famous computer hacker/master gamer is soon called upon to deal with the rogue program, but doesn’t fare much better, his efforts to kill Maitreya sees her lop off his hands with a samurai sword for real before she decapitates him for good measure. Oh dear. Soon the Gunmen are trapped in the game after nipping in the to patch it, Mulder dons sunglasses, body armour and an assault rifle and goes into the First Person Shooter to save his friends. Only for FPS to straight up disappear, leaving the Gunmen safely behind, but somehow Mulder has been taken into the videogameTRON-style and is now a part of it.
