Oh, and the skull is liquefying, neat

Image credit: MakerWorld/schnurrri

Last week, Valve chose their absolute most favourite announcement time – Friday evening, after we all go home – to release the Steam Frame ’s CAD files to the world. In short, this lets anyone with a 3D printer or a lathe or an injection moulder (etcetera) take the VR headset’s official blueprints and use them to make cool stuff for it. Non-commercially, of course.

Even before this great declassifying, though, it seems some lucky first-wave Frame recipients were already putting their own headsets on the line to prototype homemade gadgets and accessories. Some are sensibly practical. Some look inventive, if janky. At least one of them is a melting skull. All of them, I salute, as standard bearers of this open, occasionally unhinged thing we call PC gaming.

Not that all, or even most Steam Frame maker projects are the kind that would have you fake-smiling and backwards-walking out of their workshop.…