Six months ago, EVE Online developer CCP Games pulled out of the virtual reality market. The move came as a shock, given how well-suited and devoted CCP seemed to be to the tech, with international studios in the US and UK working on VR titles, and a tech-savvy EVE player base who were more likely to adopt VR early in its development cycle. As recently as last year’s EVE Fanfest, CEO Hilmar Veigar P tursson had been bullish about the technology and the company’s investment in its VR teams, so last week, at this year’s Fanfest, we asked him what had changed and what went wrong.

In short, hardly anyone was playing.

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If you saw our heads-up about the HTC Vive Black Friday deal earlier this week (to recap, you get a Vive, Fallout 4 VR, Doom VFR and a free deluxe audio strap and more for 599 starting from tomorrow), then you’ll be pleased to know that the Oculus Rift is also being discounted for Black Friday – starting TODAY, in fact. It’s almost as if they knew…

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CCP, creators of one of our favourite VR games, EVE Valkyrie, are ceasing all VR development, according to a report on Icelandic business site mbl.is. The Reykjav k-based studio is best-known for its fantastically complex MMO EVE Online but has invested heavily in VR games. Sci-fi dogfighting sim Valkyrie is its flagship goggle-game, but one-on-one ball-lobbing sport Sparc (currently PSVR only) is a bit of a cracker as well. I see this as a blow to the viability of VR as a major gaming platform not only because Valkyrie is one of the few games that makes the tech tempting to me, despite being available in non-VR form as well, but also because CCP have sounded so bullish about the field in the past.

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If you fancied hopping into the cockpit of a spacefighter and shooting spaceships while Starbucks off the telly bosses you around but you didn’t own the cybergoggles necessary to play EVE: Valkyrie, good news: VR is now optional in the EVE Online spin-off. Developers CCP last night launched EVE: Valkyrie – Warzone [official site], a rebranding and update which gave the first-person dogfighter support for regular screens and whacked in new maps and modes too. (more…)

After almost a year strapped to the foreheads of cybergoggleers, EVE: Valkyrie [official site] is coming to regular screens too. The dogfighting spin-off from spacebastard MMO EVE Online will get new maps, ships, and modes with the launch of its free expansion ‘Warzone’ on September 26th, and more importantly will no longer require VR goggles. I’ve quite fancied a go at Valkyrie’s first-person space-dogfighting but am no gogghead so this is splendid news. (more…)