I swear to god Valve is going to talk about advanced AI in HL3 people are going to lose it and try to boycott Valve because they think Gabe put ChatGPT in the game or something. I hate the buzzwordification of AI and what it has done to people's understanding of how computers work.
Unfortunately, hate-bandwagons rarely include time for nuance and understanding. I also find it ironic that his phenomenon is riddled with incuriosity and just plain false information lol
Buzzwordification of GenAI was intentionally done by companies like ChatGPT to make their LLM's seem smarter than they are, to make it sound like any sort of "intelligence" when it's a fancy text-prediction machine. You're blaming the population for intentionally being messed with by companies
No I’m talking about companies doing it, just that it also affects people who should know better. I saw an “AI powered” washing machine at Home Depot recently. Corporations were always the ones who started it.
Not every AI is generative and resource consuming. That's why not. People forget we've been creating AI since the 70s. It hasn't been until generative AI came along that it's been an actual issue for the environment, power consumption, and technology prices.
Generative AI isn't a problem for the environment or power consumption on a macro scale. The amount of water it uses is estimated to be less than a percent of global usage even after years of growth, and the power cost for training a huge AI (which only needs to be done once) is comparable to running a large game's (say, League of Legends) servers for a few months. The problems are more local-scale like building data centres in places that have poor access to water as-is. But choosing to build a data centre in the middle of a desert in California isn't going to change the fact that the vast majority of fresh water usage goes toward agriculture by an order of magnitude more than AI.
Water in agriculture is used for feeding people , the literal most essential and basic survival need of humans while water in data centers is used for shitty image and code generators with no actual added value to society .
Its not about scale but rather about usefulness, especially when humanity is dealing with such a large scale water crysis.
Boycotting only works with large, majority even, proportions of customers participating, being very disciplined, and alongside significant activism efforts to make it clear why.
Otherwise, negative purchasing signals barely exist to these companies - they can't know that you didn't use or buy them, only when someone does. This is why "don't talk about regulation, just vote with your wallet" is a soup-brained take for morons and libertarians, but I repeat myself.
It’s truly unbelievable that people still think this. It is genuinely useful for a number of different applications and pretending it’s not doesn’t change that. Believe me, there are plenty of problems it can/will cause, but sticking your head in the sand and pretending it’s useless is not going to work.
I'm a pharmacist and a private tutor, I teach various pharmaceutical subjects for pharmacy students.
AI helps me a lot in my job in most aspects, let it be project making, accurate diagram and informational figure generating, quick summary and question tuning etc.
Ram price spikes are objectively gen ai's fault. Electrical and water bill spikes in towns with data centers, are objectively gen ai's fault. The flooding of the internet with effortless lazy is objectively gen ai's fault.
If they haven't secured RAM for the next couple of year, the GabeCube has already been canceled
There is nothing to wait for, it's not getting better anytime soo
Where does those rumors come from exactly? Sounds like bollocks to me
AI taking pictures of my shit on Windows, ruining social media platforms left and right, being the talk of the town for these trillion dollar companies, artificially (no pun intended) propping up the US economy and making the rich richer, destroying the environment, costing the American taxpayer incomprehensibly large amounts of money, jacking up electricity bills for millions of people, jacking up the cost of consumer grade computer hardware and finally delaying HL3. Plague upon society all for this shit to be wrong or hallucinate 75% of the time. Straight up can't google shit anymore.
not to mention poisoning our culture (music, literature, visual arts)...won't be surprised if most big time media cuts costs by having as much as possible GenAI'd, and the average consumer is either apathetic or powerless to stop it :(
Lot of AI shills in this thread that don't seem to understand it's destructiveness in most consumer based industries.
Without regulation in the space it's going to be only used to further the wealth disparity between classes and force more people into a technofeudalist state, the science contribution of AI can't possibly hope to recoup the pain and suffering by millions of people in our life time, whether through increased bills, lost jobs, or disinformation.
AI is a cancer without regulation which there seems to be no incentive to as everyone is high on billionaire dollar funding rn.
They'd rather be whiny bitches instead of realizing the potential and using it as a one-man army.
Whine about it on reddit? ✅
Make your dream game? ❌
The fact you're being down voted despite only giving a neutral opinion shows it. Not even shilling it, just saying "hey, it's not just greedy companies that can use it". But nah, feeling like you're part of the herd without lifting your ass is easier.
Note that if this motivates you to start making shit (or your dream game) it's still not a push of a single button and be done, still takes effort, just more achievable.
Neutral opinion is not "AI is not that bad!", neutral opinion is literally "I don't feel strongly in positive or negative way on the Generative "AI" topic "
That's just dismissal/not participating. What he said isn't necessarily chilling, just correcting the "ai is the devil it only makes the rich richer" claim. It can absolutely be used, disproportionately so, to boost a random Joe to make his own project.
It sucks, yeah. I don't even think about "one-man-armies" just, like, being able to make a funny pfp is cool enough for me 🤣
Honestly, that's why I kinda want the AI bubble to pop, so that people be less inclined to associate AI with AI Companies (Or companies in general). I understand why people dislike the corpos (and I do too), but it's frustrating to see people seeing it so two-dimensionally and associating the tech with, well, corporations and capitalism. That'd be like saying "Computers can't exist without corporations, so every computer is responsible for our exploitation and lack of privacy", which is wrong on at least two levels lol
Doesn't help that there are so many influencers peddling this shitty reductionist thinking, that people ironically gobble up without a single ounce of critical thought.
I am angry. It moreover shows that a slight increase of the price of ONE part of something is killing a thing for the majority of people. That shows that people are really not earning a lot of money.
Yesnt, if silicon manufactorers would be catering to the needs of AI we wouldnt have this shortage. But im also thinking AI is a bubble so why should they create more plants to cater to it. So AI is the problem but not 100% of it
Its not AIs fault. Did it help? Yeah, absolutly, but it didn't cause it. It was already gonna happen, big corps need servers, servers need ram, corps pay more for server ram, so why would you make consumer ram? You litteraly get less money.
Because AI companies are hoarding ram like they're fucking dragons.
They need as much RAM as possible to keep their AI running, so they're buying it.
Hell, some companies have stopped selling RAM for the usual customer and now they're exclusively selling it to big AI companies.
OpenAI bought up 40% of all ram production from the manufacturers for the 2026 year, and the other AI companies announced similar deals to the point that 90% of all RAM production factories will be manufacturing RAM meant to handle AI
Consumer ram will only make up 10% of their stock in 2026 (ie the shit people use in PC and other consumer hardware)
Oh and that 10% also includes VRAM, it got so bad that nvidia annoved to third parties that they wil need to source their own VRAM for the GPUs they will sell.
When this bubble crashes the economy, remember all the fucks that pushed AI, because they should be striped of everything they own
You contrinute to inflated RAM and graphics card prices, you increase demand for environment destroying, electricity guzzling data centers, you normalise its usage leading to incompetents who lose any sense of their own intelligence as they rely on AI. DependiNg on what you use it for, you could be facilitating its plagiarism and theft of others' works. And finally, and most pettily, you talk about it on the internet and remind me of all the inescapable slop in and around it.
You contribute to inflated RAM and graphics card prices
Yes. Demand for AI is directly responsible for recent price increase on RAM. But demand for AI is there only because people find it useful. And not to mention, I bought 16GB DDR4 RAM almost 5 years ago for ~200USD. I can still buy 16GB DDR5 for about the same price now. Except everything else got at least ~50% more expensive.
environment destroying, electricity guzzling data centers,
Have you seen closely any modern industry? DCs consume electricity (and in cases some water, but that is not as common as people say), and produce heat (+water vapor in case of adiabatic cooling). That's it, no emissions, no toxic (or any other waste).
you normalise its usage leading to incompetents who lose any sense of their own intelligence as they rely on AI
Where do you draw the line? AI is bad. How about google docs / excel? How about driving assist systems in cars? Computers in general? Typewriters?
Fun story: When I was in elementary school, I was being repeatedly told I need to know how to divide two numbers without calculator, because "you won't be bringing calculator with you everywhere".
Depending on what you use it for, you could be facilitating its plagiarism and theft of others' works.
I don't use AI for plagiarism, and copyright violation is not a theft. And whether copyright violation occurs or not is currently a really grey are - there are some preliminary judgements in either direction.
you talk about it on the internet and remind me of all the inescapable slop in and around it.
This I totally understand, because I sometimes feel the same way. It is fair to admit that slop was there way before AI, but it is also fair to admit that AI had made it much more prevalent.
Sure... Like in the 18th century when salt was as expensive as gold. Really happened. Doesn't mean you should in anyway be paying those prices or that it's a realistic representation of its so called scarcity.
The realness of the so called shortage can be seen in Sony not raising prices on the PS5, and Microsoft raising prices on Xboxes that were already built with cheap ram.
Transistor, silicon, and some copper? Yeah that shit ain't worth what they are telling you. You could probably build your own for those prices.
Supposedly the materials cost about $2 to fabricate. None of these components are experiencing any form of shortage. Only ddr ram is supposedly so scarce it's price is sky rocketing.
This is 100% another case of corruption, like the great salt trade.
For average consumer it does not matter if the the companies are taking advantage of it or if there is real scarcity what maters is that RAM prices are like 4 times more expensive than they used to be and wont be any cheaper for years to come.
They’ve always been scared, and that’s a good thing. They’ve abandoned HL3 ideas so many times because they want it to be the best it can be. If Valve was like every public company with soulless shareholders, they’d just release it for the hype-profit. But no, Valve understands art. They are scared to announce the game, and they should be. This dedication is why Valve can make some of the greatest gaming experiences ever made.
That's not really true. They've openly said that EP3 was canned because the Source engine was holding them back, and HL3 couldn't be made on Source 2 until the engine was more stable. So it's mostly been technological reasons, rather than fear. It's not like Valve will go bankrupt over a bad HL game.
Nothing has said the game is finished. Some of the data mining indicates that some optimizations are being made, optimizations that are typically done around the end of development.
Also, Half-Life Alyx was amazing. They haven’t turned into ‘cowards’ between then and now. Remember that Half-Life Alyx was essentially finished when they realized that the story wasn’t good enough and they rebuilt it. They have always been this cautious. They are determined to make their stories and games the best they can, unlike public companies just trying to make their shareholders happy and profitable.
Half life alyx was almost completely finished but when playtesters played it they said the story was horrible. The story was then completely rewritten from the ground up. Just because hlx seems like it is "finished" doesn't mean it meets valve's standards.
Exactly! It is a good thing Valve has such annoyingly high standards. It’s what makes them able to release a game so uncontestedly amazing that it destroys the whole VR gaming market!
There's really no reason for them to jump the gun. Keep it unannounced, keep polishing. Announce at a better time, maybe RAM prices will stabilize soon.
Why not boycott AI in general, not only half-life fans hate it after all
I swear to god Valve is going to talk about advanced AI in HL3 people are going to lose it and try to boycott Valve because they think Gabe put ChatGPT in the game or something. I hate the buzzwordification of AI and what it has done to people's understanding of how computers work.
Unfortunately, hate-bandwagons rarely include time for nuance and understanding. I also find it ironic that his phenomenon is riddled with incuriosity and just plain false information lol
Buzzwordification of GenAI was intentionally done by companies like ChatGPT to make their LLM's seem smarter than they are, to make it sound like any sort of "intelligence" when it's a fancy text-prediction machine. You're blaming the population for intentionally being messed with by companies
No I’m talking about companies doing it, just that it also affects people who should know better. I saw an “AI powered” washing machine at Home Depot recently. Corporations were always the ones who started it.
I'd be furious if my beloved Xengorilla was run by a clanker
So you'd prefer it to have no AI /s
ChatG-manPT
Average redditor cant grasp the concept that reddit isnt the whole world.
Not every AI is generative and resource consuming. That's why not. People forget we've been creating AI since the 70s. It hasn't been until generative AI came along that it's been an actual issue for the environment, power consumption, and technology prices.
Generative AI isn't a problem for the environment or power consumption on a macro scale. The amount of water it uses is estimated to be less than a percent of global usage even after years of growth, and the power cost for training a huge AI (which only needs to be done once) is comparable to running a large game's (say, League of Legends) servers for a few months. The problems are more local-scale like building data centres in places that have poor access to water as-is. But choosing to build a data centre in the middle of a desert in California isn't going to change the fact that the vast majority of fresh water usage goes toward agriculture by an order of magnitude more than AI.
Water in agriculture is used for feeding people , the literal most essential and basic survival need of humans while water in data centers is used for shitty image and code generators with no actual added value to society .
Its not about scale but rather about usefulness, especially when humanity is dealing with such a large scale water crysis.
Chatgpt's servers used 40% of a towns freshwater supply in a month btw
It's more popular than it is unpopular believe it or not, especially outside of Reddit.
Note that Altman doesn't actually want to use the RAM. He just wants to deny the RAM to everyone else. These wafers are literally going to go to waste.
We need another Luigi.
One for every greedy CEO
jew
in order to do that, you first have to switch to linux
like i did
Boycotting only works with large, majority even, proportions of customers participating, being very disciplined, and alongside significant activism efforts to make it clear why.
Otherwise, negative purchasing signals barely exist to these companies - they can't know that you didn't use or buy them, only when someone does. This is why "don't talk about regulation, just vote with your wallet" is a soup-brained take for morons and libertarians, but I repeat myself.
No, I want HLX really but I won't be boycotting AI, it's helping me a lot.
How is ai possibly helping you?
It just spews unreliable and stolen shit, engaging with generative ai at all is harmful.
It’s truly unbelievable that people still think this. It is genuinely useful for a number of different applications and pretending it’s not doesn’t change that. Believe me, there are plenty of problems it can/will cause, but sticking your head in the sand and pretending it’s useless is not going to work.
[deleted]
Or it was just Germans
I'm a pharmacist and a private tutor, I teach various pharmaceutical subjects for pharmacy students.
AI helps me a lot in my job in most aspects, let it be project making, accurate diagram and informational figure generating, quick summary and question tuning etc.
Tbh, a Butlerian Jihad would be pretty nice.
Because the game is speculated to have AI aswell
Damn HL3 will have chatgpt??!!!
Yes, with AI voice for Gordon Freeman
Yes
lemme translate, "i think the game is going to have AI as well"
Every Half Life game has AI. Why wouldn't this one?
Have you seen HL1 cockroaches? Those are ChatGPT powered
that freeman picture is AI modified.
Everything is AI, AI stole my job, stole my kids, stole my wife, punched my grandma, kicked my grandpa and squatters right'd my house!
ChatGPT, cancel the RAM price hike and generate a GPU shortage for me. Must only be nvidia GPUs
Ram price spikes are objectively gen ai's fault. Electrical and water bill spikes in towns with data centers, are objectively gen ai's fault. The flooding of the internet with effortless lazy is objectively gen ai's fault.
I dont get how those filthy clankers still have any form of support.
They are nothing more than dicerolls, what word should come next, filled up with stolen info.
It poisoned our water supply
Burned our crops
Honestly why aren't gamers in general boycotting AI? It legit fucks over pc building so bad
gamers? boycott??? lol that's a good one, unfortunately gamers are the biggest suckers on planet earth
They targeted gamers!
Redditors as well, they're too addicted to their Reddit porn to have motivation to do fuck all.
Don't think it worked when gamers boycotted cryptocurrencies during GPU shortages.
We still had to wait a year or two for things to normalize.
And the games themselves, the reason a lot of ppl build PCs anyway :(
Why don’t they just download more RAM? Are they stupid?
Probably the reason we dont download RTX
If they haven't secured RAM for the next couple of year, the GabeCube has already been canceled
There is nothing to wait for, it's not getting better anytime soo
Where does those rumors come from exactly? Sounds like bollocks to me
AI taking pictures of my shit on Windows, ruining social media platforms left and right, being the talk of the town for these trillion dollar companies, artificially (no pun intended) propping up the US economy and making the rich richer, destroying the environment, costing the American taxpayer incomprehensibly large amounts of money, jacking up electricity bills for millions of people, jacking up the cost of consumer grade computer hardware and finally delaying HL3. Plague upon society all for this shit to be wrong or hallucinate 75% of the time. Straight up can't google shit anymore.
Exactly, there need to be protests against this shit.
Plus those afromentioned reasons, people are already using it to make the glass human a thing.
What’s the glass human?
The concept of every part of you being transparent
not to mention poisoning our culture (music, literature, visual arts)...won't be surprised if most big time media cuts costs by having as much as possible GenAI'd, and the average consumer is either apathetic or powerless to stop it :(
Let's just buy crowbars and rush their facilities.
The combine represent AI companies, sucking the life out of the world
Is Shakespeare really dead?
Lot of AI shills in this thread that don't seem to understand it's destructiveness in most consumer based industries.
Without regulation in the space it's going to be only used to further the wealth disparity between classes and force more people into a technofeudalist state, the science contribution of AI can't possibly hope to recoup the pain and suffering by millions of people in our life time, whether through increased bills, lost jobs, or disinformation.
AI is a cancer without regulation which there seems to be no incentive to as everyone is high on billionaire dollar funding rn.
Someone sane, finally
Yeah, the sub is way too positive about those vile clankers.
I've always stood against AI.
Hate greedy companies?❌
Hate generative AI?✅
BOTH
One cannot go without the other. Should have mentioned both.
No? Pretty sure AI hasn't only been a thing for 3 years, now. It's been used before, and there's also plenty of open source AI projects out there.
They'd rather be whiny bitches instead of realizing the potential and using it as a one-man army.
Whine about it on reddit? ✅
Make your dream game? ❌
The fact you're being down voted despite only giving a neutral opinion shows it. Not even shilling it, just saying "hey, it's not just greedy companies that can use it". But nah, feeling like you're part of the herd without lifting your ass is easier. Note that if this motivates you to start making shit (or your dream game) it's still not a push of a single button and be done, still takes effort, just more achievable.
Neutral opinion is not "AI is not that bad!", neutral opinion is literally "I don't feel strongly in positive or negative way on the Generative "AI" topic "
That's just dismissal/not participating. What he said isn't necessarily chilling, just correcting the "ai is the devil it only makes the rich richer" claim. It can absolutely be used, disproportionately so, to boost a random Joe to make his own project.
It sucks, yeah. I don't even think about "one-man-armies" just, like, being able to make a funny pfp is cool enough for me 🤣
Honestly, that's why I kinda want the AI bubble to pop, so that people be less inclined to associate AI with AI Companies (Or companies in general). I understand why people dislike the corpos (and I do too), but it's frustrating to see people seeing it so two-dimensionally and associating the tech with, well, corporations and capitalism. That'd be like saying "Computers can't exist without corporations, so every computer is responsible for our exploitation and lack of privacy", which is wrong on at least two levels lol
Doesn't help that there are so many influencers peddling this shitty reductionist thinking, that people ironically gobble up without a single ounce of critical thought.
AI companies are delaying the launch of Half-Life 3. Respond accordingly.
They can have my RAM if they give it back when they’re done
I am angry. It moreover shows that a slight increase of the price of ONE part of something is killing a thing for the majority of people. That shows that people are really not earning a lot of money.
I'm SCARED, hell, I'm ANGRY
But what can we do about it. Im deadass
Would be really funny if the lack of HL3 is what finally brings down AI somehow
Yesnt, if silicon manufactorers would be catering to the needs of AI we wouldnt have this shortage. But im also thinking AI is a bubble so why should they create more plants to cater to it. So AI is the problem but not 100% of it
It's all because of generative AI. EVERYONE, LET'S HATE GENERATIVE AI, LET'S DESTROY GENERATIVE AI!
I FUCKING HATE GENERATIVE AI
I wonder if OP is just being sarcastic or genuinely believes AI is to be blamed for no HL3 lol
Its not AIs fault. Did it help? Yeah, absolutly, but it didn't cause it. It was already gonna happen, big corps need servers, servers need ram, corps pay more for server ram, so why would you make consumer ram? You litteraly get less money.
no
I dont like ai but I fail to see the correlation here. Games can be RAM intensive for many reasons
Because AI companies are hoarding ram like they're fucking dragons.
They need as much RAM as possible to keep their AI running, so they're buying it. Hell, some companies have stopped selling RAM for the usual customer and now they're exclusively selling it to big AI companies.
Take a look at the ram prices right now
OpenAI bought up 40% of all ram production from the manufacturers for the 2026 year, and the other AI companies announced similar deals to the point that 90% of all RAM production factories will be manufacturing RAM meant to handle AI
Consumer ram will only make up 10% of their stock in 2026 (ie the shit people use in PC and other consumer hardware)
Oh and that 10% also includes VRAM, it got so bad that nvidia annoved to third parties that they wil need to source their own VRAM for the GPUs they will sell.
When this bubble crashes the economy, remember all the fucks that pushed AI, because they should be striped of everything they own
Cope harder
Boltlicker
Let's be honest - AI is a great tool.
Let's be honest: it is not.
Maybe not for you, but why do you care what tools I use for my work?
You contrinute to inflated RAM and graphics card prices, you increase demand for environment destroying, electricity guzzling data centers, you normalise its usage leading to incompetents who lose any sense of their own intelligence as they rely on AI. DependiNg on what you use it for, you could be facilitating its plagiarism and theft of others' works. And finally, and most pettily, you talk about it on the internet and remind me of all the inescapable slop in and around it.
Yes. Demand for AI is directly responsible for recent price increase on RAM. But demand for AI is there only because people find it useful. And not to mention, I bought 16GB DDR4 RAM almost 5 years ago for ~200USD. I can still buy 16GB DDR5 for about the same price now. Except everything else got at least ~50% more expensive.
Have you seen closely any modern industry? DCs consume electricity (and in cases some water, but that is not as common as people say), and produce heat (+water vapor in case of adiabatic cooling). That's it, no emissions, no toxic (or any other waste).
Where do you draw the line? AI is bad. How about google docs / excel? How about driving assist systems in cars? Computers in general? Typewriters?
Fun story: When I was in elementary school, I was being repeatedly told I need to know how to divide two numbers without calculator, because "you won't be bringing calculator with you everywhere".
I don't use AI for plagiarism, and copyright violation is not a theft. And whether copyright violation occurs or not is currently a really grey are - there are some preliminary judgements in either direction.
This I totally understand, because I sometimes feel the same way. It is fair to admit that slop was there way before AI, but it is also fair to admit that AI had made it much more prevalent.
There is no delay ffs and there is no shortage chill my dudes
There is definitely shortage. Just check history of RAM prices in your local shop. For example here 64GB DDR5 costs as much as AMD 9070XT GPU.
not for long. that 9070 XT has ram in it too...
Sure... Like in the 18th century when salt was as expensive as gold. Really happened. Doesn't mean you should in anyway be paying those prices or that it's a realistic representation of its so called scarcity.
The realness of the so called shortage can be seen in Sony not raising prices on the PS5, and Microsoft raising prices on Xboxes that were already built with cheap ram.
Transistor, silicon, and some copper? Yeah that shit ain't worth what they are telling you. You could probably build your own for those prices.
Supposedly the materials cost about $2 to fabricate. None of these components are experiencing any form of shortage. Only ddr ram is supposedly so scarce it's price is sky rocketing.
This is 100% another case of corruption, like the great salt trade.
Seems legit
For average consumer it does not matter if the the companies are taking advantage of it or if there is real scarcity what maters is that RAM prices are like 4 times more expensive than they used to be and wont be any cheaper for years to come.
Nope. Having knowledge of things is beneficial to make reasonable choices.
Again, Sony hasn't raised its prices. If you can't find a deal, you aren't looking very hard. Even for an average consumer.
Go buy RAM rn brother
Yeah just looking at the math If ddr ram goes up another $200 It'll make sense for valve to just build its own production facility
There is no war in Ba Sing Se.
[deleted]
They’ve always been scared, and that’s a good thing. They’ve abandoned HL3 ideas so many times because they want it to be the best it can be. If Valve was like every public company with soulless shareholders, they’d just release it for the hype-profit. But no, Valve understands art. They are scared to announce the game, and they should be. This dedication is why Valve can make some of the greatest gaming experiences ever made.
That's not really true. They've openly said that EP3 was canned because the Source engine was holding them back, and HL3 couldn't be made on Source 2 until the engine was more stable. So it's mostly been technological reasons, rather than fear. It's not like Valve will go bankrupt over a bad HL game.
[deleted]
Nothing has said the game is finished. Some of the data mining indicates that some optimizations are being made, optimizations that are typically done around the end of development.
Also, Half-Life Alyx was amazing. They haven’t turned into ‘cowards’ between then and now. Remember that Half-Life Alyx was essentially finished when they realized that the story wasn’t good enough and they rebuilt it. They have always been this cautious. They are determined to make their stories and games the best they can, unlike public companies just trying to make their shareholders happy and profitable.
Half life alyx was almost completely finished but when playtesters played it they said the story was horrible. The story was then completely rewritten from the ground up. Just because hlx seems like it is "finished" doesn't mean it meets valve's standards.
Exactly! It is a good thing Valve has such annoyingly high standards. It’s what makes them able to release a game so uncontestedly amazing that it destroys the whole VR gaming market!
If they were cowards, then they wouldn't have broken their long silence with a VR-exclusive prequel.
And there's nothing saying that the game is 100% complete, just close to completion.
There's really no reason for them to jump the gun. Keep it unannounced, keep polishing. Announce at a better time, maybe RAM prices will stabilize soon.
They still do