Focusing on cross-headset support, Valve aims to make Steam the go-to place for virtual reality content distribution. Now touting more than 600 VR titles, the platform’s VR apps are steadily rising through the ranks of the entire Steam library.

steamvr-oculus-rift-setup-install-games
See Also: How to Use the Oculus Rift With SteamVR in 4 Steps

Among Steam’s top 10 best reviewed games, 30% are VR compatible, including the #1 position which has been held by Valve’s The Lab since at least as far back as July, and is now the best reviewed game among Steam’s entire library of more than 10,000 games.

Newly joining the top 10 best reviewed games is Rec Room, an Early Access VR title that combines a social VR experience with multiplayer mini games. The title is rated ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ with 99% of 515 reviewers giving it a positive vote.

steam-top-rated-games-9-28-2016

While The Lab and Rec Room certainly get a boost in positive reviews thanks to being free, VR-compatible title Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, a cooperative bomb defusal game, holds the #10 position even with a $15 pricetag.

Meanwhile, VR games like Raw Data made a splash at launch by hitting #1 in the Steam Top Sellers list, later confirming to have reeled in more than $1 million in revenue, an impressive figure for a game exclusively built for a still fledgling install base of HTC Vive users.

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • d2kx

    NEKOPARA Vol. 2 should have been #1 tbh

    Also Chocola best girl

  • jlschmugge

    I’ve found top rated to not be a very good marker. It is too biased by those who either love, hate it, or have a cult following, or it has overexposure followed by being acceptably good (such as The Lab). There are not too many games where I feel that the Rating is truly representative if the game is worth the time for everyone else. That’s not saying that any of these games are horrible and do not deserve to be near the top, just maybe in the top 100.

    Think about the bias for a sec. When somebody is looking for a game, they are either likely coming to Steam to purchase with an already informed (or hyped) decision, or they were convinced by the trailers and game description that this is the game they want. The fact it gets a positive or negative in the ratings is more about if it met peoples’ expectations when they made the decision to purchase.

    I can’t believe there could have been that many people to play Ty, but I’m sure those coming to Steam to buy it knew exactly what they were getting into and were not disappointed with their purchase. Now if you wanted a true unbiased metric if Ty is really the top rated game, you will need to send a large random group of Steam gamers a copy of the game, require them to play at least some portion of the game, and then have them rate it. I could feel confident that Ty would get a much different placement on this chart.

    Look at No Man’s Sky. It is OVERWHELMINGLY negative on Steam. This game managed to balloon nearly the entire gaming populations’ expectations, so everyone bought it and most people didn’t like it. However, there happens to be a small following who really like No Man’s Sky. If the expectations weren’t ballooned, and only the people who would have liked it bought it, I’m sure it would have an ok rating. The same I’m sure it would be of any of these top ten games if the hype was a bloated as No Man’s Sky’s was.

  • MrGreen72

    Quality > Quantity etc…

    • DougP

      Re: “Quality > Quantity”
      There are reasons for both, however, that’s why the article commented on both.

      The Quantity was the 600 #, however the Quality aspect was addressed by the “3 of 10” out of top 10 games (by ratings).

  • Moose

    Why would anyone use top 10 rated games on steam as an indicator for ANYTHING?

    Freaking Portal 1 and 2, One Finger Death Punch are on the top 10 and have no place in modern gaming.

    Also nice click bait title. 30% of 10. Who talks like this? Just say 3.

    • dextrovix

      Why should any title have no place in modern gaming? It’s a popularity list of all time, not what has just become available during “modern” (2016?) times.

      • Moose

        Best rating =/= most popular. In fact, these games are pretty random of a list including some that not too many people have heard about (Iron Snout), not reviewed as much (Ty has about 700 reviews), only 3 of them were released less than a year ago, super niche (Nekopara), and decade old games (Portal 1).

        Really this just represents the random few games that have not received as many negative reviews “just because”. And that qualified them as Best Rated. There are much better techniques for gauging “Most popular of all time” on steam. This one is not one of them.

        • Moose

          *only 3 of them were not released less than a year ago

  • Charles

    Really wish Rec Room would add support for forwards-backwards locomotion rather than forcing teleportation. Forcing teleportation Recs many of the games for me. I mean, wrecks. Pun intended.

    • J.C.

      I don’t see why they couldn’t allow for this. There’d be no real advantage in terms of fairness. In fact teleporting players get an advantage in being able to “POP” to somewhere else, but people who used button-based forward motion wouldn’t get disoriented from teleporting.

      • Charles

        I would be fine with a slight disadvantage in exchange for a much better experience.

  • Most if not all those games(w/ price tags) had better have demos.

    VR Games have this stigma of being experiences so this would help folks a lot and VR itself.

  • In an another article I’ve read that the problem with present demos is that most of them are just crappy prototypes… so there are great games (the top ones) but most of them are not so good… anyway looking these increasing numbers makes me happy about the future of VR

  • JohnPankake

    True there is a lot of crappy title on steam right now but recently I just found some indie gem titles like:

    Galaxy Golf
    Human, we have a problem
    Paddle Up
    Island 359

    Human, we have a problem is also on sale right now (45% off): http://store.steampowered.com/app/491100

  • OgreTactics

    These are mostly demos, crap and oldies. Nobody is impressed or want to get on board of PC VR because of that.