Valve: blame the developer if VR makes you sick

Motion sickness isn't the fault of VR technology, but because of the decisions developers make within their game, says Chet Faliszek.

Motion sickness isn't the fault of VR technology, according to Valve's Chet Faliszek.

Instead, players should blame the developer for poorly implementing virtual reality within games, he said.

"The idea that VR must get you sick is [bullshit]," he said at EGX on Friday, as reported by GI.biz.

"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."

Valve's Vive VR tech is co-developed with HTC and includes a "lighthouse" system that lets the player move in a 5 by 5 metre space.

According to Faliszek, Valves lighthouse tech is better than rivals such as Oculus rift or Playstation VR as they both use more traditional controls. Gamepads, said Faliszek, are part of the motion sickness problem as they don't mimic normal human movement.