Steam lists 143 Steam Frame Verified games on September 18, and fewer than half are VR

Steam lists 143 games as Steam Frame Standalone Verified on September 18, four days after the headset launched, but only 63 of them are VR games. The rest are flat games such as Hollow Knight: Silksong, Hades II, Balatro and Portal 2, which Steam Frame plays on a virtual screen.

Beat Saber is among the 63 VR games Steam listed as Steam Frame Standalone Verified on September 18. Image: Beat Games

Valve's launch post on September 14, a week after backend changes pointed to an imminent launch, promised "over 100 games (and growing)" with the badge. The exact figures come from Steam's own store filters: the Verified filter returns 143 titles, and adding the VR filter cuts that to 63. The count moves daily, so treat it as a snapshot.

Beat Saber is in, and Blade & Sorcery is out

The VR list leans heavily on Quest favourites. Beat Saber, Gorilla Tag and Walkabout Mini Golf VR are all Verified, as are Red Matter 2, Moss II VR and GORN 2.

Half-Life fans get both releases of the community-made Half-Life 2: VR Mod, but Steam rates The Lab, Valve's own 2016 collection of VR mini-games, as Unsupported for standalone play. Blade & Sorcery gets the same Unsupported rating.

A larger group of big names has no rating at all. VRChat, Bonelab, Skyrim VR, Fallout 4 VR and Into the Radius show no Steam Frame badge, and neither does Half-Life: Alyx, even though Valve added standalone Steam Frame support in its September 14 update. No badge does not mean a game fails: Valve's documentation describes an Unknown game as one that "has not completed the compatibility review process".

Valve loosened the Playable rule three days after launch

Valve said in June that the same test criteria apply to VR and flat games: the default graphics settings must perform well, text must be legible on the built-in display, and the default controls must work with the Steam Frame controllers. Valve's Steamworks documentation sets the performance floor: flat games must run at a minimum of 30 fps at 1280x720 and VR games at a minimum of 72 fps at 1728x1728 "during normal play".

Games that miss some checks land in Playable, which Valve defines as a game that "functions on Frame, but may require manual work from the user". Only 25 games carry that badge, and just one of them, Arca's Path VR, is a VR game.

Part of that bar moved on September 17. The SteamOS 0.3.0 release notes list, under developer changes: "Change Playable performance criteria to allow any resolution (was: 1440p)." On September 18, Valve's compatibility documentation still says "VR games below 1440x1440 will appear with an Unsupported badge". The two statements contradict each other, and Valve has not said which one now applies.

Streaming still covers the rest of the library

None of this limits what Steam Frame can stream. Valve's documentation says the review "only applies for games (both 2D and VR) running locally on Steam Frame, not games running on a PC streamed to Frame", and that a rating "will not affect whether your game is available to customers on Frame".

So a game without the badge can still run on a gaming PC and stream to the headset. Valve's launch post calls Steam Frame "designed for streaming" and says it "can handle your entire Steam library".

Valve collects the Verified games on its Great on Frame hub. For a headset that costs $1,059 in the US, 63 standalone VR games is a start rather than a library.