Valve Calls VR Motion Sickness "Bullsh*t"

Valve, by and large, doesn’t seem to get… passionate.

Now that isn’t unique to Valve by any stretch of the means--a lot of developers avoid appearing passionate about anything (other than games) lest they risk alienating some of their market and/or audience. Even EA, who is perhaps the most outspoken supporter of gay rights in the games industry over the past few years, is more of a quiet supporter--supporting developers who choose to make those decisions and offering money to pro-equality causes--never once have they raised a huge fuss over it or drawn too much attention to their altruistic design.

But Valve, in a rare show of passion at last week’s EGX, started defending VR technology, specifically against claims that it caused motion sickness. The speaker is Chet Faliszek, and… well… here’s the quote:

"The idea that VR must get you sick is bullshit. We have people come in who don't want to do demos. In a party of ten people there will be someone who says, 'I'm gonna be sick, I'm gonna be sick, I can't do this.' That expectation is based on either what they've seen before or what they've heard. As consumers and people in the community, hold developers to it. They shouldn't be making you sick. It's no longer the hardware's fault any more. It's the developers making choices that are making you sick. Tell them that you don't want that."

Some harsh words, but then, coming from Valve, where anyone can be a PR manager, it’s probably not surprising. Valve, of course, is working on their own VR machine to compete with the Oculus Rift and Sony, and have claimed to have eliminated motion sickness altogether with its design. If that’s true or not, obviously, has yet to be seen by the general public.

Regardless, he’s obviously interested in making sure people understand who is at fault, here. Or maybe he’s just trying too hard to pass the buck. Who knows?