Resident Evil Village VR might come to PC

One of the Dimitrescu daughters with blood smeared on her face

(Image credit: Capcom)

Back in June, Sony announced that RE-series-highlight-mashup-reel Resident Evil Village was going to get a PSVR2 release complete with 4K, eye-tracking, 3D audio, and all the other fanciness that a modern VR version brings. Much as we'd like one of the best horror games on PC to get the same treatment on our platform of choice, given that Resident Evil 7's VR release has yet to make the jump it seemed unlikely.

Until now. Redditor u/LitheBeep has datamined a hint that Village VR might make it to PC after all. In the game's executable they found references to PSVR followed by "OpenVR", "OculusTouch", "OculusVR", and "OculusRemote", as well as the string "autoLaunchSteamVROnButtonPress".

They also point out that on October 28 Capcom updated Resident Evil Village's Steam store tags to add one for "VR". While store tags can be added by Steam users, publishers can also add or remove tags themselves. Doing so is an important bit of marketing as these tags determine whether a game will show up in the "more like this" section, as well as whether it will be highlighted in "recommended for you" boxes, themed sales, and so on.

However, to pour a little cold water of skepticism on the rumor fire before it gets fully burning, it's worth noting that Capcom also added the VR tag to Resident Evil 7 in June of 2017 and we're still waiting for that to amount to anything. What's more, looking over its history on SteamDB shows the VR tag was first added to Village in May of 2021 before being removed and then added again multiple times alongside various other tags of dubious relevance like "hentai" and "dating sim". Presumably there's logic behind this constant tinkering with tags—maybe the mysterious Steam algorithm likes it? A lot of what goes on behind the scenes with Steam's store pages is as much superstition as anything.

Until an official announcement is made we'll have to make do with the mod that adds VR support to Resident Evil Village. It's the work of modder Praydog, and it also works with Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, and Resident Evil 7. Which is nice.

The recently released Resident Evil Village DLC Winter's Expansion included a third-person camera, extra characters for the Mercenaries mode, and a story scenario in which you play Ethan's daughter Rose. We found it to be a satisfactory but sparse addition.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.