This issue has been plaguing a lot of people and even though the solution isn’t new, I figured I’d post it here, as the original post, so everyone doesn’t have to search through all the other threads to find the most upvoted answer or best answer highlights.
1 - Go to your Unreal install directory. Typically, this is located in C:\Program Files\Epic Games\Version#
2 - Navigate to Engine > Plugins > Runtime > Steam > SteamVR
3 - Open the file SteamVR.plugin in Notepad++
4 - Look for this line - “EnabledByDefault”: true, and change it to “EnabledByDefault”: false, then save the file.
Make sure to leave that comma in there as that tells the code to continue to the next line. If you remove it then the code will stop there and you will get this error:
Failed to read file. Comma token
expected, but not found. Line 14 Ch:20
(C:/Epic Games/UE_version#/Engine/Plugins/Runtime/Steam/SteamVR/SteamVR.uplugin)
Clicking OK will still load the Unreal Editor. It won’t load SteamVR, but you’ll get that error every time you start Unreal Editor and that’s just as annoying.
Now when you open the editor SteamVR is nowhere to be found! #happydance
You’ll need to do this for each version of Unreal you have installed. I originally did this with 4.26.1 and it worked. But then I opened a project that was done in 4.25 and there was SteamVR again. I repeated the steps and now SteamVR doesn’t load.