With just two months or so until the launch of Half-Life: Alyx, Valve is still struggling to meet demand for its Index VR headset. Our latest check on Valve Index stock and availability shows that nearly every package of the headset is completely sold out in all 31 regions where sold.

Update (January 14th, 2020): After a comprehensive check of Valve Index stock and availability in all 31 countries in which Index is sold, we found that the headset is sold out across the globe.

The Valve Index hardware comes in several packages:

  • Headset + Controllers + Base Stations (AKA ‘Full Kit’)
  • Headset + Controllers
  • Headset-only
  • Controllers-only
  • Base Station-only

Across all regions, except Japan, none of the packages are in stock and available for immediate purchase.

Japan is the only region where all Index packages aren’t sold out across the board; orders there are handled by Valve’s regional partner Degica which reports that the ‘Headset + Controllers’ and ‘Headset-only’ are still in stock, while ‘Full Kit’, ‘Controllers-only’, and ‘Base Station-only’ are all sold out.

In response to the demand, Valve appears to have revamped its Index page to make it easier to know when Index is back in stock. Where a simple ‘Back in Stock Soon’ message used to reside, all pages now have a ‘Notify Me’ button allowing logged-in users to sign up for an alert when stock becomes available. The message at the top of the window reads, “We’re busy catching up with demand for Valve Index!”

“We are working hard to build more units and meet the high demand,” a Valve spokesperson told Road to VR on Monday. “We are targeting to be back in stock before Half-Life: Alyx ships.”

Update (December 2nd, 2019): Just days after we spotted that Index has been sold out in some regions following the announcement of Half-Life: Alyx,  the Index ‘full kit’ now notes that “delivery before December 25th cannot be guaranteed” due to “recent high demand” on the US and Canadian Steam stores.

The other packages (headset + controllers, headset-only, and controllers-only) in the US are still out of stock with a “Back in Stock Soon” message in place of the “Add to Cart” button.

Original Article (November 27th, 2019): If Valve is counting on Half-Life: Alyx being a killer app for VR, early signs suggest they may just get their wish.

While Valve’s Index headset was backordered at launch earlier this year, a few months later it became available for ‘immediate shipping’ and stock appears to have held steady ever since… until now.

Following last week’s announcement of Half-Life: Alyx, most Index packages—the headset-only, controllers-only, and headset + controller packages—are currently listed in the US and Canadian stores as sold out with a ‘Back in Stock Soon’ message in place of the order button.

As for the ‘full kit’ package (headset + controllers + base stations) in the US, Valve is advising that anyone ordering today can “expect delivery before December 25th,” nearly a month from now.

Valve sells Index in 31 countries; so far we’ve confirmed stock shortages in the US and Canada.

Update (November 28th, 2019): Road to VR reader Immersive Computing reports that the UK version of the Steam store is showing regular 4-8 day delivery times on all Index kits. We’ve also confirmed that availability in Italy is nominal.

If you can access the Steam store in a region other than the US, UK, and Italy, please check the Index page on Steam and drop us a comment below with what kind of shipping availability you see on each kit.

SEE ALSO
'Half-Life: Alyx' Will Run on All SteamVR Headsets, Free for Index Owners

While Valve has confirmed that Half-Life: Alyx will be compatible with all PC VR headsets via Steam, the game is expected to play best on Index thanks in part to the advanced finger-tracking capabilities of the Index controllers. Valve also announced that it would be giving Half-Life: Alyx away to any owners of Index hardware (headset or controllers).

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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."
  • Immersive Computing

    Valve Index has no availability issues in the UK, every option is available with 4-8 business day for shipping. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/80643b9773eef0e8cb14531ceec26c050e28f79d1de8665ff4653d936940fa35.png

  • Hello
    The Japanese distributer’s product page list the controllers only package as sold out. The other packages are available. Greetings from a chilly Japan.
    Hans O. Karlsson
    CTO, Mimir LLC (A VR Production Company)

    • benz145

      Thanks Hans!

      • Nelia

        After five yrs I chose to abandon my previous occupation which improved my daily life… I initiated working at a special job on internet, for a company I found over the internet, for some hours everyday, and I generate a lot more than I managed to do on my previous job… Previous pay-check I obtained was $9000… Fabulous thing regarding this is the fact I get additional time for my family. Try it yourself, what it’s all about… cut.sx/auP/

  • DanDei

    In Germany the shop also says: 4-8 days business days for shipping but later in the ordering process they say that delays are possible due to a spike in recent orders.

    • benz145

      Got it, thanks @dandei:disqus

  • gamechanger

    Fully available in Poland : ]

    • benz145

      Thank you!

  • In Hungary still available

    • benz145

      Thanks for the report : )

  • Brian Brown

    I’m kind of curious how high it is on the Steam sales charts internationally. In the US, it’s been number first or second for a while now for the full kit. The five dollar Steam controller is number one, with the Index number two right now, and that’s during a Steam sale.

  • George T

    Not even available in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore or Korea… Why not write a story on how Valve snubs half the world instead of about stock levels. Maybe do some actual journalism and ask them when the rest of the world can join in and actually buy the index?

    • Gerald Terveen

      na – those countries are bad countries with bad gamers that do not deserve access! this is all about making a point and not about trying to balance production with demand.

      • Arcticu Kitsu

        What……………

      • sfmike

        You sound like a Trump Republican.

        • Gerald Terveen
        • Ellie 187

          still bitter about the hag losing in 2016 in spectacular fashion?? buck up buttercup you only have another 5 years of him and then he will be gone.

          • Jerald Doerr

            Lol!!! He said another five years! Lol… If that man-hag wins again I guess I’ll be jumping off the Empire State building a second time!

          • Ian Malign

            Prepare thyself. He is going to.

        • fdad

          Lmao. NPC mentality is as true as they say.

        • KUKWES

          Remove your politics from my VR ingestion.

        • Johnny Casserole

          TRUMP 2020 ALL THE WAY, BUTTERBALLS.

      • Mike Porter

        I see people don’t comprehend sarcasm

        • Gerald Terveen

          There are two kinds of people in the world!
          Those that can extrapolate from incomplete information.

          It’s the same for sarcasm. No matter how obvious you make it.

          • Bob Smith

            But … what is the other kind of person?

            Hah! Agree completely. And I hate having to explain that I’m being sarcastic, or even worse, asked to add the s/ preemptively. Swift would now need to write “jk” at the end of his proposal.

          • NooYawker

            To be fair these days it’s nearly impossible to tell who’s being sarcastic and who’s truly insane.

        • david vincent

          You can never be 100% certain if a stranger on the net is sarcastic or just a troll. That’s why we use smileys.

          • Mike Porter

            Only annoying teens use smileys.
            Adults can sense sarcasm.

          • david vincent

            well you didn’t meet enough weird people on the internet…

    • RockstarRepublic

      Dumb comment. Valve is not a massive hardware manufacturing company, in fact they only started up their own manufacturing center in the US where as most companies end up relying entirely on chinese manufacturing. Not saying that this is the case here, but clearly their line of product is not on some massive global scale and it is incremental. VR is still in the early adoption phase.

      You can clearly see they are expanding the range of regions they have headsets in. If its not in the region you want, then you just have to be patient or find someone/retailer who is willing to bring those headsets over and resell them locally.

      • Immersive Computing

        @Rockstar Republic

        Valve partnered with Flex to make the Steam controller in the US at a factory in buffalo grove Illinois. That’s the factory in the video from a few years back, and it’s where the 2.0 base stations are manufactured.

        Headsets and controllers are marked as “made in china” my understanding is their partner is ODM (original design manufacturer) Goertek who used to make the Rift CV1 amongst other VR headsets.

    • Ed

      No need to take out your frustrations on the author of this article. This is perfectly reasonable stuff to report on. The lack of availability in some regions is another (related) story well worth exploring as well, but that doesn’t invalidate this article.

      I’m in Australia and therefore also affected by the lack of availability here. There must be a reason and I’m interested to know what it is, and even more interested in seeing the unit sold here.. but either way it should be possible (at least when there is more stock in circulation) to import one through other channels, no?

  • Arcticu Kitsu

    Even though my headset shipped out fairly late because of American Thanksgiving & Black Friday its still available here in Canada.

  • Jonas Stillhoff Lund

    Hello. Just did a check in Denmark and all packages says 4-8 days:-)

    • benz145

      Thanks @jonasstillhofflund:disqus!

  • Andrew Jakobs

    I’m still not sure if I would buy the HTC Vive Pro starter kit (black friday) or the Valve Index. I hate that the original vive doesn’t support the 2.0 lighthouses, otherwise it wouldn’t be that hard of a choice (I’m wanting one for development, but I want to do more headsets than the index alone).. vive headsets are cheaply available due to people selling their headsets/controllers without the lighthouse..

    • Ellie 187

      as far as quality of the optics, I recommend the index (higher refresh rates make all the difference)… also those controllers are a delight to use compared to the vive wands

      • Immersive Computing

        @andrew jacobs. Buy an Index full kit and pick up a Vive Pro headset which works with index kit. I was tempted during black Friday as Vive Pro headset was selling for £599…

        • Andrew Jakobs

          I bought myself the Vive Pro starter kit due them having the 1.0 lighthouses and the original wand controllers, so I can pickup a cheap original vive headset for testing purposes (as that’s still a pretty large group of people). Will buy the Index early next year when I’m a bit further along with my development. (but will keep the extra functionalities of the knuckle controllers in mind during current development).

          • Charles

            I think you made the right choice, simply because the Index has a terrible contrast ratio (600:1) and terrible black levels. This really makes a huge difference in VR immersion. LCD screens like this make dark scenes feel more like looking at a cheap computer monitor than like being in a place, and make brighter scenes less aesthetic and lifelike.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            Problem for me was the Odyssey+ was very hard to come by in The Netherlands, and very expensive if you wanted to import it.

          • Charles

            Yeah I heard about that. It’s unfortunate. But I like the Vive Pro.

          • Bob Smith

            Pimax XR also has an OLED screen and best consumer level FOV available AND native integration with Vive or Index base stations and controllers. Best consumer VR experience you can get if you know what you are doing.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            Yeah, but that headset costs just as much as the Vive Pro Full kit here in the netherlands, 1399 euro’s, and that’s the pimax headset only, so you’ll need to drop a lot of money for the basestations and controllers too.
            I bought myself the Vive Pro starter kit at black friday which was 899 euro’s (including shipping and 1 full year of infinty), and I’m pretty happy with it for the time being. I can now develop for the Pro, and the original Vive, and once I’ve got a decent prototype working I’ll buy myself the Index (with controllers) and some other headsets.

          • Bob Smith

            Of course you should recommend the Odyssey–it has an OLED screen. Much better than the LCD screen in the Index which can’t depict dark environments AT ALL.

    • Stanley McCormick

      I really like the Index, but there’s a crack by the nose that I can see out of no matter how I adjust the headset. The Vive Pro is my favourite as it’s comfortable & has a (Though expensive) wireless option. I’m going to pair it with the Valve controllers & base stations.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        I ended up buying the starter kit, and I really like the headset, I love that i can tighten it very firmly to my head. I’m not gonna buy the wireless option, I’ll leave that for another new headset in the future. Once I’ve got some time to continue development I might look into buying the Index with its controllers..

        • Stanley McCormick

          I’m hooked on the controllers for the finger tracking, tightening strap & overall comfort. Best of luck on whatever you may be developing (Guessing software/gaming) What I’ve read is that Valve has now moved onto a newer version of the controllers that address the original issues there were. Here’s hoping.

  • Гена Воробьев

    You can check availability for yourself in any country. Just open Steam page in browser incognito mode and add ?cc=[country code] to the address.

    Like this: https://store.steampowered.com/valveindex?cc=it (Italy) or https://store.steampowered.com/valveindex?cc=uk (United Kingdom)

    So far it seems like Index is available in most of the countries.

    • benz145

      Great tip, thanks!

  • Good news, but I think that Valve is not manufacturing that many, so it’s easy that even a minimum pike makes them sold out. Anyway, good news, because this means that there has been a pike :)

    And compliments to @immersivecomputing:disqus for having been mentioned!

    • aasdfa

      yupp and opened up to the majority of countries right before the holiday season. It was all intentional

    • NooYawker

      You may think that but that doesn’t make it true. People say that about iPhones all the time. The Oculus Quest is sold out in many places as well. Truth is we don’t know how many they are manufacturing. We may find out they only sold 10,000 or 1,000,000.. who knows?

    • mirak

      no this is a very bad news for vr

      they missed a lot of sales

  • RedSpeedster34

    In Canada, Valve opened up ordering and changed from “back in stock soon” to “add to cart” ordering last night (Friday) after going out of stock some time in the day. However, the website shows a “you may not get this by Dec 25th” message. I bought relatively soon after ordering reopened, so hopefully I’m high in the queue.

  • benz145

    Were your ears touching the headphones prior to this?

    • Immersive Computing

      Left ear was too close to ear speaker whilst right ear had correct gap, left was very uncomfortable at volume and adjusting left/right balance started allowing background noise to bleed into the left. The red spacer in this orientation places the ear speaker about 10mm further off the headband so both can be run at power and balanced.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/00b5e50666d86585571f37171c7d071fc5d920ebfdf55a76ddda849b1b5e9daa.jpg

      • M Rob

        Good fix!. I’m curious if this was due to a product defect or, if its not too delicate a question, ummm… asymmetric auditory anatomy?

        • Immersive Computing

          Just ears showing normal human asymmetry, and an ear speaker with no depth adjustment to compensate

      • benz145

        Cool, glad you could fix it. Did you design/print this spacer yourself?

        Thanks as always for your thoughtful comments and interesting photos with them!

  • DanDei

    Country: Germany
    Ordered the only Headset option on Nov 27th and up untill now the status is:

    Shipping Status: Processing
    Delivery delays are expected due to high order volume. We’ll ship your order as soon as we can and send you an email with tracking information once that happens.

  • dogbite

    Canada here. Ordered Index controllers on the 22nd. Order shows shipped (as of today) but no tracking# yet.
    I was pleased when Valve finally got around to supporting their Canadian customers. Some of us were feeling left out and as a Steam member since it’s launch, I was particularly feeling we were being considered unimportant. Nice to see the high demand here has shown them otherwise.

  • leRAFs

    From France; Ordered Headset only on Nov 29th, the shipping status just changed today to shipped.
    Can’t wait! :D

  • RockstarRepublic

    I had them in my cart for the longest time, went to order and it wouldn’t go through due to being out of stock. Just goes to show hesitation can really bite you in the arse. I honestly never expected them to actually sell out of the headset and headset controller options, in fact I thought that would logically be the the stock they would have the most excess of.

    I’d love for Valve to implement some kind of inventory quantity gauge so we can get a general idea of how much is left in stock.

    • Dextrome

      or just a way to preorder the next batch at least…

      • RockstarRepublic

        I wish they had that option. For now its just a valve time version of “coming soon”.

    • mirak

      hesitation maybe saved a lot of time in RMA and stuffs

  • Pre Seznik

    Got mine today!

    • Immersive Computing

      Have fun!!

  • dutch

    Sold out in The Netherlands now

  • Radish

    Sold out in sweden

  • Mike Porter

    but what about sales numbers?

    • guest

      Yeah, without any numbers, you fanboys are doing free marketing for them. Dare you ask how many where stocked to start with!

    • Immersive Computing

      I’m more interested in the rate of returns (due to defects) and the split in return costs between Valve and their manufacturing partners. Is is faulty manufacturing? Faulty components? Faulty design?

  • Mike Porter

    why is everyone having goertek manufacture their headsets?

    • Immersive Computing

      My assumption is a limited number of ODM for XR with suitable manufacturing and skilled workforce for hand assembly? Goertek makes sense considering their experience manufacturing Rift CV1 as well as reference headsets.

  • Ces

    By the time the index comes to Australia the next generation will be out that we will have to wait years to be able to buy.
    I suspect I will miss out on HL:A for a long while due to lack of hardware availability :(

    • NooYawker

      I imagine when these orders go out, and they’ve increased production they may start selling to Australia. Maybe around March.

  • JesuSaveSouls

    I look forward to playing it on wmr.

  • Immersive Computing

    Unfortunately this is also having an effect on RMA’s.

    I’ve returned my defective left Index controller and steam support cannot give me an ETA for the replacement. I am stuck playing games that work one handed or using Xbox controller for seated VR.

    As this will be my 9th controller (5 left, 4 right) since launch it’s getting tiresome, I’ve lost more time now waiting on RMA’s than actually using my Index. If there was a credible alternative I would have asked for a full refund long ago…

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1f13647fbc5e9be56776df00ccfbec27591cf248024d219372ab666912675a67.jpg

    • Foreign Devil

      9th controller? Wow they must be real shit quality . . or you must be very hardcore gamer.

      • Immersive Computing

        Have a look at the valveindex sub Reddit… I’m not alone with these issues, unfortunately.

        I’m no hardcore gamer, typically 8-10 hrs of VR a week if lucky. They are just not…well made. Perhaps too complex for their own good, with an undersized, inexpensive joystick module as the primary issue.

  • Niklitor

    Hi, why don’t they sell it to Russians???!?!?!

  • AlanWake

    That’s a good news! Half-Life: Alyx push VR forward! VR is life.

  • NooYawker

    I ordered the controllers right after the announcement and figured, I’d order the headset a little later. Right after I put my order in, only the full kit was available. Now nothing is, I really want to get my HMD before Alyx is released. I should have just got the combo when it was available.

  • impurekind

    Eh, but isn’t VR supposed to be dead by now according to a bunch of ignorant naysayers a few years back?

  • rfanck

    But pimax bought thousands and thousands of knuckles controlers and light houses and valve is not very well know for having tons of stock and huge capacity production, so what do Road to vR concludes ?

    • G-man

      pimax isnt selling that many headsets. they arent supply that many knuckles bundles.

  • Was ready to pull the trigger 1/1/2020 but it was already of out of stock. Disappointing, since I wanted to test it with “Apollo 11: One Small Step For…’ VR Experiences” before its release on 4.11.2020 (Apollo 13 50th Anniversary). Decided to get a used Vive Pro for $400 to see how well it works with a GTX 1070, GTX 1060 Ti and RTX2070 Super. I have already tested the Vive Pro on a GTX 1080 system with great results at the VR Cafe when showing off part 1 on 4/11/2019 but now I can test it with the LM simulator and “LUNAR WARS.”

    In any case, if anyone with a Valve Index wants to beta test the VR experiences in the coming weeks, contact me at info@1smallstepfor.space or head out to https:1smallstepfor.space. The goal is to make it free for educational institutes & museums and part of the VRSCCC (Virtual Reality System Command & Control Console) Kickstarter coming up in February.