Gunman Contracts – Stand Alone just launched in Early Access, so I put the Steam Machine through its paces running this VR-and-non-VR hitman shooter, streaming to a Pico 4 Ultra via Steam Link. Non-VR is flawless. VR took a fair bit of trial and error to get right.
Non-VR runs great on Steam Machine
Running Gunman Contracts directly on the Steam Machine in non-VR mode, it looks great and pulls over 120 frames per second, so there’s nothing wrong with how the game itself runs on the hardware. One odd thing worth flagging: the Steam Controller’s trackpads are mapped to behave like directional presses (up, down, left, right) rather than a normal trackpad, so you’ll probably want to remap that.
VR over Steam Link needed some work
The rough experience turned out to be specific to VR and Steam Link rather than the game or the Steam Machine itself — there have been some Steam Link complaints on the forums that line up with what I ran into. To get into VR at all, I installed SteamVR (now on version 2.17, so it has all the latest fixes) and got things running on a Pico 4 Ultra. You do need to quit out of the initial window to get into full VR mode, which can double up annoyingly, and it’s worth setting the launch option to force OpenXR/VR mode from the start — otherwise you can land on a blank window that’s hard to get out of once you’re already in the headset.
I tried tweaking Steam Link’s streaming settings — turning on HEVC and bumping up traffic priority — but that made little difference to the stream itself. At medium quality, streaming was already stuttering badly and it wasn’t much better after dropping down to the low preset. Steam Link also disconnected outright at low settings a couple of times. This is despite a wired Steam Machine and an Eero 6 Wi-Fi 6 mesh with the router and access point sitting in the same room, so latency really shouldn’t have been the problem. With several enemies on screen even at low settings, it turned into a proper slideshow, which cost me shots and broke the sense of immersion.
The settings that actually fixed it
Forcing OpenXR from launch rather than switching into VR afterward helped, though there was still noticeable stutter until I dialed in the in-game settings properly. What finally cleared things up: quality level set to the lowest, texture quality set to low, headset refresh rate capped to 72 (90 looked about the same — either is fine, just don’t leave it uncapped), anti-aliasing set to SMAA, and ambient occlusion turned off. With those settings, the stutter was pretty much gone entirely. Interestingly, the visual difference between the highest and lowest settings in VR is barely noticeable unless you’re deep in one of the flashier contract areas with a lot of effects, enemies, and bullets flying — most of the time the lowest settings look just as good while running far better.
Headset notes and final thoughts
I also have a Meta Quest 3 on hand, but for streaming over Steam Link the Pico 4 Ultra is the one I reach for — it’s lighter and noticeably better for both streaming and recording, even if its store doesn’t match the Quest’s library. I don’t have a Steam Deck in hand yet to test this locally, so streaming to a headset was the only VR option available this time around.
Bottom line: Gunman Contracts is flawless on Steam Machine outside of VR, and playable in VR once you force OpenXR and drop the in-game settings down — just don’t expect Steam Link to make that easy out of the box.
