Steam Hardware Survey - July 2025 results included (see latest post in this thread)

Something odd is going on - or the most amazing thing, lol - this month the amount of SteamVR users nearly doubled - or increased by a massive 71% - so in April 2022 1.89% of Steam users had a hmd connected, but in May it was 3.24%!! Did Valve make an error? 🤔

May 2022

Market shares:

Not much new under the sun here - also why the massive 71% increase in connected hmds feels strange. 2c. 

Seems like the May 2022 results where a glitch, and everything now is back to normal:

JUNE 2022

Quest 2 is still moving forward - at the expense of Rift-S, Vive, Quest and Index. Pico Neo 3 and Vive Pro saw small positive changes. 

UploadVR speculated that the glitch in May 2022 was caused by Steam not including persons with Simplified Chinese language:

"May 2022 showed a dramatic and unexplained jump to 3.24%. We reached out to Valve for clarification but never received a reply. At the time, we noted that the lack of any real change in the headset usage share statistics suggested this wasn’t the result of a spontaneous Quest 2 sales surge. Instead, we speculated it was either caused a glitch in the data, or by the strange reduction in the number of Steam users with their language set to Simplified Chinese."

Source: https://uploadvr.com/june-2020-steam-hardware-survey/

UploadVR posted a nice overview - where the May 2022 anomaly is easy to observe:

Everything is back to normal, and about 2% of Steam users continue to have hmds attached to their rigs 🙂 It's important to remember that Steam is growing, so 1% in 2020 may be a lot fewer users than 1% in 2022. Thus is 2% stays the same over several years it means that the number of VR users is increasing, even if the percentage does not. 

I actually got a hardware survey last night. (very rarely offered to me over the years)

Ok, my Rift-S was already plugged in and the oculus desktop software was open (I was playing Elite Dangerous earlier). I even have 3 Rift CV1 sensors plugged in, but not the CV1 right now.

So let's see what Steam wanted to report in the survey:

My Reverb wasn't plugged in and the Mixed Reality Portal wasn't running. But Steam ignored my active VR headset and wanted to boost up the numbers for the one I'm not using.

I canceled the survey.

Seems we got another anomaly for July 2022 - which is why I thought about not mentioning the results. But UploadVR made an article about it - and the results are fun to watch - maybe - total VR users just jumped from 2% to 7% :

July 2022

I don't believe a jump from 2 to 7% - especially not in July. More info here:

https://uploadvr.com/steam-vr-hardware-survey-anomaly-again/

I do agree with UpLoadVR that these results don't match earlier trends and probably are incorrect:

https://uploadvr.com/steam-hardware-survey-unreliable/

These results:

August 2022

While the 2.6% Steam users with hmds could be correct, I don't think Quest 2 owners declined nearly 10% the last month. Well, let's see what happens next month, lol. In the meantime, gotta get me some popcorn! 🙂 

This has happened before...

The survey is showing two 'Others' this month.

So I assume the 13% increase in the red others are really unrecognised Quest 2's. Maybe it happens with some firmware of software updates. That would mean an overall 5% increase which doesn't seem right either but you never know. The looming price increase could have triggered some to buy, plus the uncoupling of FB accounts.

Apparently Valve have corrected the flaw in the survey system.

The new monthly totals are fixed, but the correct breakdown by headset won't be seen until next month.

https://www.roadtovr.com/valve-fix-steam-survey-vr-population/

Christmas sales and Black Friday sales are now registered through January 2023, and we see a very tiny growth:

JANUARY 2023

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

Whoever got the new Quest 2s, most probably don't use them for PCVR on Steam - although the Quest 2 did take a clear step forward . Pico did get more positive numbers, but you'll still need a magnifying glass to really see that growth 😉 Most other hmds declined in use. 

Rift CV1 still is 5th most used hmd on Steam, and Rift CV1 is more popular than all WMR hmds combined - take that cheap G2s 😉

Worth noticing is that sales of Varjo Aero and Quest Pro are so incredibly poor that these hmds aren't even on the list - thus these hmds go below the 0.02 % limit. 

Btw, this was 1 year ago:

January 2022

Nearly the same numbers for the top hmds and for total Steam users with hmds. Now, 2% a year ago is not necessarily the same as 2% today, because when Steam grows in the number of users, then 2% today represents a bigger number of users than 2% last year. But Valve has not published precise user numbers, and I do not know how much Steam grew the last year. There have been several reports of Steam growing in 2022, like this one:

https://gamerant.com/steam-concurrent-users-player-count-record-milestone-2022/

Still the above trends do indicate that getting more than 2% of Steamers to use VR is a great challenge. 

An article has been published on Mixed saying SteamVR trends don't look that good with these results:

https://mixed-news.com/en/steamvr-in-january-2023-pico-4-grows-pc-vr-usage-disappoints/

I do work with data a lot - and stretching the line will make it appear more flat - and could hide the true tendencies - if I reduce the length and add a best line, then the exact same results look like this:

Does look a lot better, right? 😉

Very strange indeed:

March 2023

The PSVR2 arrived Feb 22, so users spending time with PSVR2 and not using Steam may have had an impact. Or maybe something is wrong with the March 2023 survey, normally we rarely see such variations - but glitches have happened before:

https://uploadvr.com/steam-hardware-survey-unreliable/

I did get the PSVR2, and my Index did collect some dust during the last month - but I'm back now with Vertigo 2 after having completed Call of the Mountain 🙂