A lead developer of Blade & Sorcery has confirmed the PC VR version of the game will not run natively on the Steam Frame due to performance limitations.
Blade & Sorcery developer Wully has confirmed that the game will be marked as “unsupported” for standalone play on Steam Frame because the headset is simply unable to run the PC VR version well enough. They are quick to add that PC streaming works well.
The quote follows:
B&S has been around for a long time now. The PCVR version […] is unfortunately a bit to heavy to run standalone on the Frame, and you’ll see it as “unsupported” so people don’t get confused or disappointed. It’s better for us to be transparent about its performance. Even turning the graphics down and lowering settings, it’s just a bit too heavy to run via proton/fex.
However, streaming from PC to the Frame works great!
For those of us with our finger on the pulse of the industry (read: trudging through boring spec sheets for the last few years), the news that B&S won’t run natively on standalone Frame should come as no surprise. When I saw Wully’s post I immediately thought, “Well, yeah, that’s why they made Blade & Sorcery Nomad for Quest and Pico 4.”
But if the response on social media is to be believed, the news has surprised many in the VR space.
Screens from the PC VR version of Blade & Sorcery
Steam Frame and Standalone
Steam Frame is often described as Valve’s answer to Meta Quest, and many seem to believe it presents a generational leap in standalone VR. I can see where that belief might come from.
Like the Quest line, Steam Frame is a standalone unit, and it does indeed pack newer and more powerful guts. It runs SteamOS and uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and 16GB of RAM compared with Quest 3’s Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 and 8GB of RAM, allowing compatible VR and traditional games to run directly on the device without a PC. Valve is also creating a Steam Frame Verified system to indicate which games can run “great” in standalone.
But Valve is very clear about what it considers the headset’s primary use case: streaming games from a more powerful computer. In Valve’s own words, “Steam Frame is a streaming-first, wireless VR headset + controllers that can handle your whole Steam library.”
The headset comes with a dedicated wireless adapter designed to provide a direct, low-latency connection between the headset and a PC, desktop or laptop, as well as devices such as the Steam Machine. With demanding PC VR games, unsupported doesn’t necessarily mean unplayable on Frame. Some PC VR games will be too demanding for the Frame’s mobile-class processor to deliver the experience the developers consider acceptable when running standalone, but when the game is rendered on a gaming PC and streamed to the Frame, the PC does the heavy lifting.
Mike Johnson
There’s Always Nomad
As for Blade & Sorcery, specifically, it seems almost inevitable that the built-for-standalone Blade & Sorcery Nomad will be brought to Steam as a “Great on Frame” game. This lower-spec port of B&S has nearly the same gameplay as the PC VR version, but uses lower fidelity graphics, lower quality physical simulations, and less concurrent AI enemies.
And of course, you can always stream B&S to the Frame (whenever Steam Frame finally ships).
