Valve says it mounted “assortment and evaluation” points with the Steam {Hardware} Survey’s VR part.
Final week we printed an article outlining recent anomalies within the Steam {Hardware} Survey’s VR part, together with giant unexplained jumps in the important thing ‘Steam customers with VR Headsets’ determine. We concluded that we’d now not be utilizing it as a dependable supply for our evaluation of the VR market.
We had reached out to Valve for a proof on a number of events – hoping for a repair – to no avail. However now Valve has responded, issuing corrected information for the previous three months and saying it has mounted “assortment and evaluation” points affecting the accuracy & consistency:
The {hardware} survey sees pure variations in survey response charges from month to month, so some variability within the statistics is to be anticipated. Nonetheless, the Could/July jumps and additional class in August had us take a deeper look, and we’ve now mounted a couple of points with the gathering and evaluation of knowledge, in addition to corrected the August survey outcomes web page. We anticipate to have extra correct outcomes going ahead.
The {Hardware} Survey is provided to a random pattern of Steam’s userbase every month. If you happen to select to just accept, it uploads your PC specs and peripherals. Earlier than March 2020 the survey relied on headsets being related through USB on the time of sampling, however Valve modified it to scan your SteamVR logs from the previous month. Corporations like Meta, Valve, & HTC don’t reveal {hardware} gross sales figures so it’s essentially the most dependable indicator of PC VR’s adoption.
Right here’s the ‘Steam customers with VR Headsets’ information earlier than correction, as seen in our earlier article:
Now right here’s the corrected information we obtained for Could, June, July, and August:
If Valve’s declare of extra correct outcomes going ahead holds true, we’ll resume utilizing it for evaluation of the VR market. We’ll watch the info carefully within the coming months to confirm that is the case.
