While future users and developers alike are preparing themselves to feast their eyes upon the wonder that 3D virtual reality gaming will be like, Steam is working on becoming a VR platform for those soon to exist VR games. Sadly, even if all those headsets will be coming out soon, we will only be able to enjoy a very limited set of titles in full 3D VR. But that doesn’t mean that for the individuals who’ll be getting either the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive soon will have to burn through a few titles then forget their headsets until something new comes out.

With the Oculus Rift on the very close horizon for those who preordered it and the HTC Vive release coming very soon after, Steam is making sure that anyone who owns a VR device won’t be shelving them a couple of weeks after purchase. Valve announced today that in the works is a new Steam mode that allows you to play standard, 2D games using virtual reality headsets.

Naturally, these won’t be anything like the original VR experience that users expect, but instead something that pretty much allows you to use the VR headset of your choice as your display for various, regular 2D games. So instead of playing these games using your monitor, you can have it all simply beamed and blaring into your eyes directly from inside a VR device; be it Oculus Rift, HTC Vive or the SteamVR one, whenever it comes out.

So this new mode that Steam is introducing is casually called SteamVR Desktop Theater Mode and has begun its beta phase very recently. Not much is known about it at the current time, as its first official showcase will happen at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco next week. However, there are reports telling us that playing a game in Theater Mode will be like being transposed into a virtual living room of sorts while you play your games on what looks like a huge television screen.

This has already been argued to be a problem by some, as it is rumored that playing games in this 2D theater mode doesn’t exactly offer you an enormous amount of screen space. Individuals who have tried out Minecraft already noticed the option that allows you to change from 2D to 3D mode, switching from something that simulates what things would be like if you were playing the game normally on a desktop monitor to getting completely immersed in the blocky 3D world of Minecraft.

Image Source: 1