A recent website for a Valve Prism VR headset has tricked thousands of fans into thinking that a new SteamVR headset is on the way. Unfortunately, that’s not true, and Valve has shut down rumours of the new headset already.
SteamVR fans noticed a live website for a Valve Prism headset, promoting an unannounced VR device with 3D renders and marketing gubbins. However, the entire website was a fake based on an old joke which PCGamer reports is from a furry convention hosted last December.
The website does look very official and follows Valve’s usual website design for products like the Steam Deck. In fact, the website even uses Valve’s fonts and design aesthetic to create a faux product page that could’ve definitely been made by the company.
However, there are multiple discrepancies that were discovered by online Reddit detectives trying to determine if the website was official. For starters, the website doesn’t use Valve’s typical hosting service, instead using CloudFlare.
Additionally, the website has a fake copyright disclaimer located at the bottom of the page, but it’s misspelled. Instead of spelling Valve with a lowercase “L”, it’s instead spelled with a capital “I”. Very sneaky, website designer, very sneaky indeed.
Finally, fans noticed that the actual product description of the Valve Prism is a hasty rewrite of the Steam Deck’s description. The description swaps out the Steam Deck specs for a version with simply bigger numbers, stating the device is powered by “AMD's Zen 4 + RDNA 3 architecture”.
Fans of Valve’s VR headsets have gone feral at the website’s launch. Even with so many discrepancies, fans from the furry community are still going wild at the thought of the Valve Prism’s existence, the curse of getting too involved with a meme.
SteamVR fans have been waiting for a successor to the Valve Index for a few years now. As one of the best VR headsets around, the Index continued Valve’s VR prestige. While the Meta Quest 3 may be more open and accessible, the Index is still pretty much the peak of VR tech. Well, outside of the way too expensive Apple Vision Pro.
While the Steam Prism may not be real, Valve is likely working on a successor. While the success of the Steam Deck has likely taken more precedent, with a Steam Deck 2 already in the works, Valve isn’t abandoning VR anytime soon.