While the Oculus Rift is a fine and interesting thing, I think adding it to the Source Engine might also be responsible for the death of Steam. Think about it: Valve are looking to make a follow-up to Episode 2 and at the same time they’re looking to implement 3D goggles into the Source engine. Gabe decides to take charge, because he’s hands-on, and replays Episode 2 while testing out the Rift. He’s forgotten about that ending. The lights flicker across Bellevue and Steam Towers power down. All of Valve’s engineers are disconnected from their Steam pods, plasma weeping from their DLC holes. They follow the smell of cooked flesh and burning hair to Gabe’s office: he’s sat in the corner, hair standing up straight, the device fused to his face. His tears at the ending shorted out the Rift, sending his sadness into the building’s infrastructure. Steam is set to emo mode and refuses to co-operate until the ending is changed. All because Valve have just added Rift support to the new Source SDK, enabling modders to add it to their games.

It could happen. It’s part of the spangly new Source SDK 2013 that’s just been released. It’s a fairly wide-ranging update. Any changes made by the modders to the SDK can be shared, and they’ve finally enabled Mac and Linux support for mods, so the likes of Black Mesa could now be tweaked to land on non-Windows machines. Welcome to the party, everyone. This is what you’ve been missing.



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I love watching the head-movement the Rift adds. It’s really relaxing. Plus one to the creator for not outputting the video in Ocu-view as well. I hate staring at the mangled view of the Rift user spread out across the screen.