Valve is making its virtual reality headset free for developers

Considering how Oculus is pretty much the king of virtual reality at the moment, how does Valve intend to compete with its own Vive VR headset? Well one way the company is hooping to do this is by making the developer edition of the headset free to qualified developers whereas the pre-production Oculus Rift still costs $350 for everyone. 

Unlike Oculus VR, whose pre-production virtual reality headset is currently available to developers for $350, Valve is planning to offer its Vive VR developer edition headset to qualified developers absolutely free according to a report from Ars Technica. The publication points out that select developers such as Owlchemy Labs, Bossa Studios, Fireproof Games and Cloudhead Games have already been seeded early dev kits. Valve spokesperson Doug Lombardi said the company plans to reveal more information as well as sign-up forms on a new site perhaps as early as this coming week. About that free dev kit – Lombardi said it’ll be free “at least initially” without elaborating. Total speculation here, but maybe the first set of dev kits will be offered on a loaner program for a set length of time and if the developer wants to keep it, then they might have to pay up.