Valve’s big return to game development has certainly made a splash with Half-Life: Alyx, with the VR title earning all kinds of praise for its merits in virtual reality as well as its cleverly designed gameplay. With that in mind, the game is very much built around its immersive platform, meaning that not nearly everyone is going to have the means to actually play it. For this reason, it’s almost inevitable that modders will remove VR from the game, with one just recently revealing how viable the process could be in a new video.

In a recent livestream from Valve News Network’s Tyler McVicker, the site founder engaged in an extended bout of datamining, looking for numerous secrets embedded in the game’s files. Among a myriad of discoveries, it looks as though McVicker had also cracked how to play the game in a non-VR capacity, with him also summoning Alyx’s hands on the screen without the availability of motion controls. The presentation certainly isn’t at all perfect, but the game was shown to be playable without reliance on VR. Check out the clip below.

As evidenced by the somewhat limited non-VR functionality, this mod is likely far from complete, but it does show that it’s at least possible to get it up and running. Valve recently touched on the subject of mods in a recent interview VGC (via Prima Games), suggesting they wouldn’t exactly be peeved by fans wanting to mod VR out of Half-Life: Alyx. “I’m looking forward to it,” Valve programmer Robin Walker revealed. “I’ve been half trolling members of the team who are worried about this!”

Walker expressed that the team knew Alyx’s VR elements wouldn’t gain traction by word alone and that players would have to experience the game for themselves to fully understand the decision. He suggested that modders may reach a similar conclusion upon fully removing VR from the game. “What I’m confident will happen is that when people get that butchered version, and they’ll have lost all the things that we’ll have got from moving to VR,” Walker added. “They will then understand very clearly why we made that choice.”

There’s a part of me that’s eager for people to be able to have that experience and realise, ‘oh, now I get it. Now I see everything we lost in that transition back to non-VR and I understand why they did it.'”

Half-Life: Alyx is available now for PC.

What do you think? Are you waiting for the day when Half-Life: Alyx modders finally remove VR, or do you feel that the game is best spent in the immersive medium? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to follow Don’t Feed the Gamers on Twitter and Facebook to be informed of the latest gaming and entertainment news 24 hours a day! For more headlines recently featured on DFTG, check out these next few news stories:

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