metathias :
While i applaud Valves willingness to be open, One cant help but wonder if their just announcing this to add fuel to Oculus's current DRM fire. Oculus is being quite Draconian with its content. So they deserve to be roasted. But im not gonna pretend that Valve, Through Steam dont impose their own kind of draconian behavior on developers as well. After all Steam is not Open, And Valve is its gatekeeper. For better, And worse.
Valve quietly released this. There's no announcement on the Steam webpage, and I couldn't find anything on any of Valve's websites.
Also, this is OpenVR, which is simply an API to make VR hardware interface with VR games. SteamVR is separate, and locked down.
OpenVR allows you to use the SteamVR API to access content, but it doesn't necessarilly need to be content from Steam. AltspaceVR is a good example of this. You can use the Vive, which lauches with SteamVR, but it doesn't launch the app through Steam.