Steam Frame Price, Release Date, Specs and Games (2026)

Checked: October 30, 2026. We read Valve's Steam Frame product page, its launch, reservation and Valve Index announcements, and the Steamworks compatibility rules, then pulled the full Verified and Playable lists from the Steam store ourselves. Reviews from Wired, Wccftech and VR.org fill in battery and streaming. We have not worn a Steam Frame, so nothing on this page is hands-on. Prices are from the Steam store on October 30.

Steam Frame price in every region, and what the box leaves out

Valve set six regional prices at launch. They include VAT where it applies, and the US prices on the store had not moved by October 30.

Both kits come with the two controllers, the Wi-Fi 6E wireless adapter and a code for Half-Life: Alyx. What they leave out is a charger. The headset charges over USB-C at up to 45W, and Valve sells its own 45W power supply with a 2.5 m cable separately. Add that and the cheaper kit costs $1,088 before tax.

The catch is when you can buy them. Valve's FAQ says the first-party accessories "will only be available to customers purchasing their Steam Frame as part of the add-to-cart process." Valve does not describe any other way to buy them, so the simplest plan is to add the charger and straps to that headset purchase. Stock is not guaranteed either: on r/SteamFrame, u/MediumRuby wrote "Wish the ergo kits were in stock though", then edited the comment after other owners told them the kits come back into stock, and they managed to order one.

Two add-ons come from other companies. The Arcturus Vision camera clips onto the front port and adds color passthrough, which the headset lacks; UploadVR and Wccftech both list it at $149. Zenni makes prescription lens inserts. The Half-Life: Alyx code has one condition worth knowing: only one copy can be redeemed per device, and none if Alyx is already in your library. The games are a separate bill, and our calendar shows when the next Steam sale opens if you want to stock the library at a discount first.

Release date and reservation timeline

Valve announced the Steam Frame on November 12, 2025. Launch then slipped to September; PCMag called it a "memory-related delay", and Wired described the headset as "a casualty of RAM and storage shortages across the electronics industry".

To get a place in the first draw you needed all of the following, and the same rules apply to the waitlist now:

• Account: a Steam account in good standing with a purchase made before April 27, 2026.
• Household: one sign-up per household.
• Model: you pick 256GB or 1TB at sign-up and cannot switch after the randomization.
• Region: North America, the UK and EU, and Australia each have their own list.
• Window: once your email arrives you have 72 hours to pay, or Valve moves to the next person.

Steam ships to the US, Canada, the UK, the EU and Australia. In Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong the headset is sold through KOMODO, an authorized distributor, and Valve says South Korea comes later. The waitlist is still open; new sign-ups go to the end, and Valve says it only dips into a region's waitlist once that region's reservation queue is finished, so "no one on the waitlist is leapfrogging" anyone with a reservation.

The estimate on the product page is not a fixed date. On October 22, u/beewyka819 posted that "despite seeing "Estimated 2027" or whatever on the store page, I just received my purchase email for the 1 TiB model," adding that they are in New England. A week later another user replied under a fresh purchase thread: "Meanwhile everyone in Europe on the 2026 list is still waiting." That is two players, not a pattern, but the lesson holds: watch your email even if the page says 2027, and remember the queues move at different speeds by region. If you will be waiting into 2027, our Steam Autumn Sale indie picks show the kind of discounts worth building a library on in the meantime.

Which games run on Steam Frame, and what Verified means

There are two ways to play. You can stream from a PC, laptop, Steam Deck or Steam Machine, which covers your whole library, or run a game on the headset's own ARM chip. The badges only describe the second case. Valve's Steamworks rules say 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 the result does not decide whether a game is for sale.

The bar is specific. A flat game must hold at least 30 fps at 1280x720; a VR game needs 72 fps at 1728x1728, and VR rendering below 1440x1440 gets the Unsupported badge. Playable means the game works but may need manual tweaks.

At launch Valve said "over 100 games (and growing)" were Verified. We pulled both lists from the Steam store on October 30 at 09:35 UTC (the Playable search also shows 2 package listings, left out here):

VR.org's tracker counted 89 on August 24 and 233 on October 23, and a week later the store showed 248, so the list grows in waves. The split is the surprise: almost two thirds of the Verified list are flat games. VR.org reads that as Valve wanting the Frame "judged as a general Steam machine, not only a VR headset."

Here is where some games people ask about stood on October 30, with their Steam Deck badge for comparison:

Three things stand out. Half-Life: Alyx, the game in the box, has no badge at all, even though Valve's own September 14 patch "adds support for Steam Frame standalone gameplay" with an ARM64 port and foveated rendering. Wired called its absence "especially odd given it runs without issue." No badge means untested, not broken.

Second, a Deck badge tells you little. Risk of Rain 2 is Verified on the Frame but only Playable on the Deck, while Cyberpunk 2077 goes the other way; VR.org reports Valve held it at Playable because it is "Not performant at default settings." Third, Valve's own The Lab lost its certification and now reads Unsupported.

GODEEPER: Risk of Rain 2 is Verified on the headset, and our Risk of Rain 2 survivors, items and bosses hub covers every character and stage if you plan to start it there.

Smaller games fill the list too. Creature Kitchen and Emberward are Verified, and Vampire Survivors, Nightwater and the boomer shooter PAPERHEAD are Playable. Wired's reviewer had a different experience: of a library of more than 1,300 games, "only a meager 18 were marked "Great on Frame."" For a big back catalogue, streaming is the realistic plan.

Streaming from a PC: the adapter and the pairing problem

Image: Valve, frame from the "Streaming & using the Wireless Adapter" video on the Steam Frame store page

The adapter in the box plugs into your PC and talks to the headset over 6GHz Wi-Fi 6E. The headset has two radios, and Valve says "one radio is dedicated to streaming the audio and visuals, and the other connects to your Wi-Fi." The eye-tracking cameras drive Foveated Streaming, which Valve says "optimizes detail where your eyes are looking"; Valve claims it "typically offers over a 10x improvement in image quality and effective bandwidth."

That is the theory. Wired tested the adapter on a Windows 11 PC, a Windows 10 PC and a Steam Machine, and in every case "the adapter appeared as connected but unpaired." Valve's October 15 client update lists "Improve reliability of pairing with the Steam Frame Wireless Adapter" and a Windows fix that stops the adapter going to sleep, so this is a known, partly fixed issue. A game with no Frame badge, like Over the Hill, is best treated as a streaming game, and its PC requirements are the ones that count.

Steam Frame specs, from Valve's sheet

Image: Valve, frame from the "Adjusting the IPD" video on the Steam Frame store page

Valve's spec sheet carries the note "some specifications subject to change ahead of availability". These are the numbers on it as of October 30.

Two numbers matter more than the rest. The weight: 440 g is 75 g lighter than a Quest 3, per Wired, and the battery and audio sit in the 245 g rear strap rather than on your face. The chip: Wired notes the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 debuted in 2023, and heavy PC games such as Cyberpunk 2077 are held at Playable on performance.

Valve publishes the battery size but no runtime. Wired says to "expect two hours at the high end for locally run games, and maybe three if you're purely streaming," and Wccftech's roundup of reviews puts standalone Half-Life: Alyx at high refresh rates "under an hour". Glasses wearers should measure first: the 140 mm limit ruled out every pair the Wired reviewer owned, and the fix is Zenni inserts at extra cost.

What Valve has changed since launch

Image: Valve, Steam Frame CAD files announcement, October 9, 2026

This is the part of the page we will keep adding to. The headset gets regular SteamOS and client updates, and the first six weeks fixed real problems.

The CAD files are free for non-commercial use; anyone selling parts built on them has to follow Valve's commercial terms first. The Index news matters if you were holding out for a cheaper wired Valve headset: what is left of Index stock is all there will be.

Our call, and the mistakes that cost Steam Frame buyers

Wired gave it 7/10 and summed up the case in two lines: "Excellent controllers tailored for VR or "regular" gaming" against "Pricey. Blink-and-miss-it battery life." Wccftech's reading of the launch reviews was the same: "the most comfortable headset anyone has worn, the streaming is excellent, the price is painful, and the battery is a serious problem."

Our view follows from that. If you own a gaming PC and a library of PC VR games, the Frame is the most interesting way to play them right now, and for Index owners it is now the only Valve headset to move to. If you want a console you wear, $1,059 plus a $29 charger buys 248 Verified games (October 30 count) and up to about two hours of play per charge; that is thin next to what streaming offers. Nobody should buy it for Half-Life: Alyx alone, since the bundled copy is useless if you already own the game.

Four mistakes are easy to avoid. Missing the 72-hour window hands your place to the next person in line. Skipping the charger and straps at checkout is a gamble, because Valve's FAQ only mentions buying them as part of the headset purchase. Reading "Estimated 2027" as final can mean ignoring an early email, as u/beewyka819's shows. And frames wider than 140 mm will not fit inside the headset, so measure your glasses before you pay.

GODEEPER: Co-op is where a Verified badge earns its keep, because nobody wants a friend's session to stall. Our How to Fish review covers the Verified co-op fishing game, listed on Steam for 1 to 4 players, and where it falls short solo.

We will update this page when prices, the queue or the Verified counts change, and add each SteamOS release to the table above.

References

• Steam Frame product page and FAQ, Valve
• Steam Frame is here! (launch announcement), Valve, September 14, 2026
• Steam Frame updates: reservation timing and more, Valve, October 9, 2026
• Valve Index production ends, Valve, October 13, 2026
• Steam Frame compatibility review rules, Steamworks documentation
• Half-Life: Alyx updated for Steam Frame, Valve, September 14, 2026
• Valve Steam Frame review, Wired, October 26, 2026
• Steam Frame orders begin, PCMag, September 18, 2026
• Steam Frame reviews: price and battery life, Wccftech, September 15, 2026
• Steam Frame price revealed, reservations open, UploadVR, September 14, 2026
• Steam Frame specs and Great on Frame tracker, VR.org
• Reservation timing update, GamingOnSteam, October 10, 2026
• Purchase email despite "Estimated 2027", r/SteamFrame, October 22, 2026