In 2014, virtual reality stood at a crossroads. Gabe Newell and Valve envisioned an open computing platform for VR—a collaborative ecosystem where the best minds could contribute without corporate gatekeeping. Magic Leap was on board. John Carmack and other luminaries were involved. The open future of VR seemed bright.
Then Mark Zuckerberg took an elevator ride. He went to Oculus, put on a headset built by Valve, and bought the company for $2 billion. The open path vanished overnight.
Ian Hamilton of Good VR, who witnessed these events firsthand alongside Rony, reflects on what might have been. "Tech giants have spent over $120 billion to own the future of virtual reality and XR," Hamilton says. "We can only imagine what an open system could have achieved with that same investment."
The acquisition redirected the entire industry. Instead of an open platform where anyone could contribute, VR became a battleground for corporate dominance—Meta, Apple, Microsoft, and others racing to control the hardware, software, and data.
But Hamilton sees a glimmer of hope in the Steam Frame headset, which aims to revive the open computing philosophy that Valve originally championed. Whether it can break the corporate stranglehold on XR remains to be seen.
"The question is," Hamilton muses, "what would a hundred billion dollars in an open system have produced?"