The Valve rumor mill goes into overdrive as VR influencers travel to Seattle for what seems likely to be the imminent reveal of the Steam Frame

Valve sure seems to be on the verge of announcing a new piece of gaming hardware, but don't get your hopes up for a Steam Deck 2. Based on the company's recent trademark of the term "Steam Frame" and a number of influencer types making cryptic social media posts about traveling to Seattle this week, it appears we're mere days or hours away from seeing a follow-up of sorts to the 2020 Valve Index.

Redditors have been compiling the evidence pointing towards a VR hardware reveal from Valve on Wednesday, including multiple VR-focused YouTubers traveling to the Pacific Northwest. Competitor Meta is actually hosting its annual Connect event on September 17th and 18th, but multiple influencers have confirmed they won't be at the event (which is in Silicon Valley, not Valve's native Bellevue, Washington). Notably, Valve timed its last big VR reveal of the Index to coincide with a Facebook developer event in 2019.

It sure seems like it's pulling the same strategy again for the Steam Frame, and if I had to guess its pitch will be much more focused on gaming and high-end VR tech while Zuckerberg uses Meta Connect as an excuse to hock some new AI stuff that'll make all of our lives a little more miserable.

So what is the Steam Frame? The solid speculation is that it's the final name for the Valve Deckard, a long-in-development head-mounted display alongside a pair of new controllers given the codename "Roy."

Even more evidence, via Valve dataminer Brad Lynch: components of SteamVR have recently been renamed "Frames" within the code. Other bits of info point to the headset likely being wireless, rather than tethered to a PC via USB.

Though I'm more curious to see what Valve does next with the Steam Deck, or if it makes another push into console territory with fresh Steam Machines now that SteamOS is far better for gaming, any new hardware from Valve is exciting nonetheless.