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The Lab
Welcome to The Lab, a compilation of Valve’s room-scale VR experiments set in a pocket universe within Aperture Science. Fix a robot, defend a castle, adopt a mechanical dog, and more. Still not sold? It’s free!
View on Steam ↗ Free (US · as of 2026-07-26)What players say
Steam review score and the most-helpful voices, which may include critical ones. Data as of 2026-05-20.
“Pretty chill game. Nice to relax and just explore. DO NOT USE VIVE! It will linger on your system for years. I uninstalled it years ago and it randomly freezes my computer because it tries to open itself on its own and crashes my computer when it cant open. DONT USE VIVE!”
— a player, Steam review · 21 hrs played“A delightful and varied VR experience to showcase the best and brightest concepts in VR. Once again Valve brings out a game with a bunch of easter eggs worth experiencing. I personally loved this little VR experience, and some of the minigames could have real potential as a…”
— a player, Steam review · 0 hrs played“why touch grass in real life when you could touch grass in this game”
— a player, Steam review · 13 hrs playedPlayer activity
Monthly average concurrent players. Live count fetched 2026-07-11 12:32 UTC · history via SteamCharts.
Price tracking
US-region pricing (USD), sampled twice daily by our own tracker since 2026-07-11. Steam prices vary by region — always confirm your local price on Steam.
Latest official news
Developer announcements via the Steam news API — links go to the original posts. More across all games on the news hub.
Minor performance updates, localization fixes
Some minor performance updates to scene loads. Chinese and Japanese language users should be able to play the Slingshot scene again.
The Lab Update - September 17, 2019
Fixed bug in longbow causing the bow to be dropped unintentionally.
The Lab: Hands-On Update
The Lab was released in 2016. It had been created for roomscale VR in a world with no roomscale VR games, and took on the difficult task of building its conventions from the ground up. Now, three year
Developing “The Lab”
Developing games is hard. When you add in the unique challenges brought on by an entirely new medium, it is arguably even more so. Last October, several members of the team behind The Lab gathered at
Developing “The Lab”
Developing games is hard. When you add in the unique challenges brought on by an entirely new medium, it is arguably even more so. Last October, several members of the team behind The Lab gathered at
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Screenshots
Official Steam store screenshots — click any shot to enlarge.
Facts & details
From the Steam store record, snapshot 2026-05-20.
| Genres | Free To Play |
| Player tags | Free to Play · VR · Singleplayer · Action · First-Person · Adventure · Funny · Sandbox · Casual · Family Friendly · Sci-fi · FPS (SteamSpy community voting) |
| Features | Single-player · Tracked Controller Support · VR Only · VR Support · SteamVR Collectibles · Steam Leaderboards |
| Languages | English * , French, German, Czech, Finnish, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese - Portugal, Portuguese - Brazil, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Swedish, Italian, Japanese, Spanish - Spain, Danish, Korean, Russian, Simplified Chinese, T… |
| Estimated owners | 1,000,000 – 2,000,000 (SteamSpy) |
Minimum system requirements (PC)
Minimum: OS *: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 Processor: Intel® i5-4590, AMD FX 8350 equivalent or better Memory: 4 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 970, AMD Radeon™ R9 290 equivalent or better, Video Output: HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort 1.2 or newer VR Support: SteamVR. Standing or Room Scale Additional Notes: 1x USB 2.0 or better port also required