Steam bestsellers come and go. Most games can only stay in the charts for a few days, hardly any lasts a month. However, there is a Steam top seller that has been on the hit list for ages – and it’s not even a game, but a VR set, and there are good reasons for that.
Valve Index: Virtual Reality Headset is a permanent guest in the Steam charts
Time and again, new games celebrate a surprise success on Steam and manage to briefly secure first place in the Steam charts. But this success only lasted for a short time. After a few days at the latest, there will be a new Steam King, while the former throne holder will quickly be forgotten.
But a Steam bestseller has been defying this trend for several months: the Valve Index VR kit. It is true that it rarely happens that the virtual reality package can claim the top spot for itself, but it has been in the past few months to be found almost consistently in the top 5. It is currently in second place, just behind the new tactical shooter Ready or Not (source: Steam).
Why is a VR headset in the Steam top sellers?
But how did Valve manage to make its in-house VR headset, which costs just under 1,100 euros, a real Steam long-runner? On the one hand The VR set is almost nowhere else offered. It cannot be found on Amazon, MediaMarkt and Co., so buying it on Steam is the best solution.
But the real reason for the consistently high chart placement is likely to be the fact that the Steam bestsellers are based on the sales of the individual products and not on the number of items sold. Since the VR headset kit costs 1,079 euros, a classic 50 euros game has to sell more than 20 digital copies to generate the same turnover. In other words, the Valve Index Kit doesn’t have to sell anywhere near as well as regular PC games to secure a spot on the Steam charts.
Escape rooms in VR – is that really fun? Alex and Robert have tried it and come to a clear conclusion:
We are still curious to see how long the virtual reality set can defend its place or perhaps even expand it. Who knows, maybe 2022 will be the year VR gaming will finally become socially acceptable.