No prices yet. I may never financially recover from this.
Would love to see Valve do a SteamOS Linux Phone next.
With it coming with an optional phone gaming accessory to use your phone as a controller (with same design/gaming usage as Steam Deck/Steam Controller)
For use with any Valve hardware/software through the connected accessory (Bluetooth/Dongle/Wired)
Don’t have an extra controller? Use your phone with the add-on.
Sidenote: Wonder if PostmarketOS will add support for Steam Frame overtime. Sadly it does not have call support I think but otherwise it would technically be a different kind of device that could function as a phone tok
Sometimes I think about how LOATHED Steam was when it launched. That was probably valid even. Still, it feels worth noting that Valve is maybe THE only company from my childhood that feels like it largely stayed true to its spirit, or whatever.
People who came to Steam later on probably don’t realise that when it was new it barely fucking worked.
Downloads crawled, games refused to launch because of authentication issues, friends/chat was offline for literally months, etc.
The only reason it became widely adopted was because Valve forced you to use it if you wanted to play the latest CS or, later, HL2. Everyone hated it.
What if he really wanted to make it up to you? Is there anything he could do to apologize?
HALF. LIFE. FUCKING. THREE.
Exactly. How tf do you propose to get it if you digest him? You’ve hit on the crux of the issue here.
Yeah he could hand over a couple billion dollars, that would make up for it.
friends/chat was offline for literally months
Friends lists didn’t work reliably for years.
This is true but this was also done at at time when all of these things were unprecedented. Valve was blazing a trail with Steam and digital distribution and there was nothing else even close.
It was pretty janky. I received a download code for Half Life 2 in the box with my Radeon 9800 Pro several months before the game was actually released. I didn’t have a lot of use for Steam before then, but I installed it anyway and my account is so old that back when the account IDs were still numeric and sequential, mine was four digits.
I only got Steam when HL2 released because I had no need for it before then. I don’t remember having any real negative feelings about it.
I was one of the haters when it first launched because I was on dialup at the time and physical discs I bought were forcing me to install steam AND THEN install a massive patch that did not work on dialup. My first day playthrough of Skyrim was ruined because of that. Took a week for that shit to download even though I went physically to a store.
But now Steam is the last man standing between us and corporate greed.
But now Steam is the last man standing between us and corporate greed.
Man how quickly people forget what things were like before the lawsuits forced valve to make steam more consumer friendly and regulatory abiding…
When was that?
I remember being annoyed that I had to install yet another launcher and make yet another account when I was installing portal. But I didn’t know at the time that this was the launcher to end most other launchers and accounts, or at the very least made most of that transparent other then adding an extra click to launch some games.
Iirc, Blizzard had just replaced the wow in-game patcher with a launcher (though I don’t recall if they had a unified launcher for each game, if they all had their own at that point, or if it was just wow), Oblivion had a game launcher, and I think there were a few others. Some of them even needed to be installed separately iirc.
Steam is nice because, being the launcher for most of my games, it’s just always open and helps organize my games. And it doesn’t feel like its main purpose is to make money, with everything else just being about opening pathways to that money. And even though it is meant to make Valve money, it’s the lack of blatant dark patterns and constant upsell attempts that makes it feel better than most of the rest of the commercial world.
If Valve went DRM free like GOG, I would have no reason to ever buy games anywhere else
(apart from exclusives, which should be illegal IMO)
It basically didn’t add any value to the experience. We just wanted to play CS, and steam just got in the way.
It happened to me (with blizzard)…and it will happen to you!
A lot of companies turned to utter shit over the years but Blizzard hit me the hardest I think.
I just paid $20 for a physical copy Counter Strike, and I find out I need to install an additional launcher and make an account to play the game I just installed. It’s the principle of the thing!
I think its because there’s likely more people who got into Steam after Steam was already a pretty popular storefront so clueless about the growing pains. My first ever PC game purchase was from the Steam store and that was maybe back in the 2010s.
So those going on about days of CDs or whatever are talking to a generation that had already moved onto digital.
Hello, Veteran Steam User (made my account the day steam released, I was big into the half life/cs/tfc scene back in the day), steam was HORRIBLE when it released. I had a cable modem way back then and it was incredibly slow. Only the ugly green theme, and crashed all the time. It was only used as DRM, not as a way to catalogue games. I clung to those WAN servers up until Valve no longer supported them, it was a sad day at the time.
I still remember the pissed-off memes, novel-long outrage threads, etc.!
because most people got exposed to steam’s launch on HL2’s launch. Where they bought the physical game, came home, installed it off like 5 CDs… then had to run steam to decrypt it and download more files because the fucking install was encrypted, and the goddamn fucking decryption took like 8 hours if you didnt have the worlds greatest computer.
Nope, I’m still totally not salty about not being able to play the game I fucking bought until the day after cause bullshit encryption fuckery, why would you ever think that.
I still have that goddamn box somewhere… i need to dig it up and see what release retail HL2 is like compared to HL2 you’d downlaod today from steam…
Well, I bought Half-Life and OG You Don’t Know Jack on discs at Target, then had to return them because HL didn’t run and YDKJ was “too worldly.” So.
They have good PR and fanboy propaganda. They’re every bit as evil as every game company out there. Steam fans just got tricked into thinking Gabe was THEIR billionaire and steam is THEIR billionaire corporation, and they can do no wrong. No other game platform has a fan base as aggressive and hostile when you point it ou
Edit: im being downvoted, sent IM threats and have had my comments on here removed by mods, if that’s not proof of what I was saying I don’t know what is lol
Technically no PR. Their MO has been to let others do the work. Their games come from hired modders, with many skins made by the community. Their localizations are from the community. The game devs and publishers have to moderate their own spaces on Steam. The players do product promotions by using the social network of Steam. Valve is practically unreachable for the press, and their actual press releases are the rawest I’ve seen: infrequent, featuring no images and little information. Their press account is run by Kaci Aitchinson, the local Fox News host who was originally hired to present The International for Dota 2, but ended up doing a bit of everything, like many at Valve.
Why does everyone here Yuck other peoples Yum? You aren’t forced to buy them
The irony of this being your previous comment
Edit: Since parent is editing - his reply called me a cocksucker, hence the mod removal. Yay for blatant homophobia
Removed by mod
Steam’s main thing is that they have recognised that killing the golden goose is a bad thing for everybody. They have consistently played for long term growth and profits, over purely short term gains.
Steam has made mistakes, but their demonstrated values have been shown to be mostly compatible with mine. I can work with that.
Also, them being privately owned means that they are less have seagull investors swooping in and demanding short term gains now now now.
The downvotes seem to agree with you…?
It’s interesting that the VR headset is ARM based. Maybe that’s a sign that 2027 will be the year of the ARM desktop
When I look at this announcement, the hardware is very exciting, for sure. But it is Valve’s dedication to Linux that really has me smiling. I don’t see three hardware devices to buy. I see two big proclamations for which the hardware is the message:
-
SteamOS on desktop! It seemed inevitable but it’s still great to see.
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STEAM VR USING LINUX AS ITS TARGET PLATFORM?!?!?
I will grant that it’s very possible I buy all three pieces of the hardware, even though I like building my own PCs. I will also grant that Valve’s support for linux probably would not be what it is without the enshittification of Microsoft’s ecosystem. But in this world I’m gonna go ahead and accept the imperfect good news.
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Did Valve just announce THREE of something?
Valve remains committed to an open PC ecosystem
happy noises
I’ve been saying for years that VR can get off my lawn until I can buy Linux native hardware. I guess I’m interested in VR, now.
“I may never financially recover from this.”
is well said.
I need to buy all of these.
why is this thing not called Steam Engine?
I want them all, but mostly the Frame. Finally decent Linux VR? On a standalone device that can also stream from a PC? On ARM?! It seems too good to be true.
And: "cheaper than the index“ Sure that only means less than 1000usd (unless they mean the headset only price at 500…?) but that’s still better than I was assuming it’d be.
wonderful time for linux on arm as well. if i read the post right, it seems there will be standalone games that will be compatible with it- even non vr ones.
Allowing diversity of hardware and operation system environments is going to be amazing. arm is so much more efficient and being able to run linux on arm while getting mainstream games is going to be cool as fuck
Even better: they’re developing a new translation layer in the style of proton for x86 to ARM called FEX, so theoretically most x86 games will run on the frame. Naturally it’s also compatible with proton so you can go windows game -> x86 linux -> ARM Linux. We’ll have to see how that runs but it’s certainly exciting to think about.
They’re not building FEX, but they have made major contributions to the FEX project! :)
Oh dang, the tested video made it sound like they were making it. Good to know, and honestly even better that they’re supporting a preexisting project!
Same, but I live in Australia so I’m not holding my breath. The deck has only just officially launched here. I bought my deck on the grey market, with a UK plug, but that ended up being a couple of hundred $ more than when it officially launched here.
They said all products will launched in all markets the Steam Deck currently ships in, and I believe their full list included Australia
If Valve makes ARM Linux work properly as a gaming/desktop OS, I will uhh hmm.
I will buy this thing.
I wonder if they’re still using Arch. Its ARM version is kinda not so great, although not terrible either.
Where’s my Steam Phone Gabe ?
Uh-oh…my wallet is in trouble.
Really excited for this and hopefully that means steamvr on Linux will actually start working better! The current Beta build is much better but still lots of work to do.
I’m definitely getting the frame as upgrade from quest 3 which I rarely use due to it being attached to Meta. The controller is no brainer considering that old steamdeck controller is still one of the best controllers on the market. Not sure about steam machine mostly because I just built my own PC - would have totally waited for it if I knew it was coming but it looks so slick.
Very excited for Linux in 2026!
NGL the cube thingy looks so damn attractive to me, especially as I don’t own any form of PC gaming…
Now please Steam, officially sell to Mexico god damn it!
I’ll buy you one and sell it. You gotta pay shipping to send it across the border. If the thing breaks, send it back to me in the U.S. and I’ll file a warranty on your behalf. I’m just a dude who wants other people to play games and have never done something like this before.
Dm me if you are interested.
This is (literally) the way a gamer should be. Cheers!
Someone else in here commented on how it took a while for the Deck to come to his country.
I almost asked him, but since you’re the second one…I mean…wouldn’t you be able to just get a Deck or a Steam Machine or whatever from anywhere and use it?
It not being available to purchase directly from Steam means you have to get it from a 3rd party reseller, or order it to an address in an officially supported country and forward it from there yourself, both of which are generally more expensive than what steam is offering. The cheapest price I can find for a Steam Deck OLED in my country is a solid 20% more expensive than the price Steam lists on their website.
Ah, gotcha, so it’s middleman overhead. Thanks.
No warranty in unsupported countries, and from what I’ve seen of Valve’s quality control you probably wouldn’t want to risk that.
and from what I’ve seen of Valve’s quality control you probably wouldn’t want to risk that.
Wait, what? Care to expand on that?
I didn’t even want to engage with a non official purchase of the Steam Deck yet for what has been already established here, and reading this kills the excitement even further 😅
My Deck definitely had its fair share of hardware issues when I got it. Ended up getting a replacement for a faulty GPU, but the WiFi card also had its issues and kept disconnecting constantly. It was a first year LCD Deck though, so maybe they’re better now. I also used to be in a Steam Deck discord and the number of users reporting hardware (and software) trouble seemed fairly high there too.
Valve sorta makes up for these issues with above average customer service, but in an unsupported country I’d for sure avoid early adopting their hardware.
My Index has never been reliable. Not the headset, nor the controllers. I have given up using it.
Hmm this makes me wonder if the Steam Deck 2 will be ARM. If the Steam Frame works well, that could be a way for Valve to push more performance/battery life out of the deck
With Valve talking about open ecosystems so much, I have glimmer of hope that they’ll move to RISC-V.
Probably not gonna happen though… At least not yet
That would be amazing, but given how speculative the Framework and other RISC projects are I feel like that would be a massive headline for Valve.
As someone who works in assembler a lot, RISC-V is probably my favorite.
If anyone knows a useful open source project where people like me can contribute to this future happening, please do respond to this comment !
I’ve followed RISC-V development. It is so promising and so cool. But it is also under-cooked right now, I don’t think it is ready to carry such a product. It might get better in the future, but as it stands it takes way too much effort to release a hardware product using it, never mind a high performant one like a gaming console. My hope is that the EU and FOSS initiatives can take a stronghold on the standard up to the point that it becomes a feasible competitor to Qualcomm and it retains it’s openness. It is the only way stuff like a truly spyware free and privacy respecting smartphone can exist. Linux will never thrive with the hostile hellscape that is ARM hardware. Valve themselves have had to fight with the stubbornness of a myriad consortiums that want to gatekeep their modules and refuse to offer open source software. RISC-V just needs a lot of love and care for now to grow into a competitive standard. Many cool developers are working on it but it doesn’t have the same financial effort behind it that ARM has.
But then, isn’t that kinda where linux was at before steamOS kicked this revolution off?? Like, I had kinda dabbled in various linux distros here and there prior to steamOS and was always left feeling like it lacked complete polish - VR, gaming, easy app installs (outside the terminal, for normies)… All that has never seemed so well rounded – until steamOS blessed me with KDE, and since then I’ve mained Debian w/ KDE on all my machines (hopefully I can even main deb on my phone, one day!!)
Point is= maybe if a company like valve (or even valve themselves) pulls a similar approach with RISC-V that we’ve seen them do with steamOS, we aren’t wrong to hope for the same sort of outcome for it as well!
But, that’s just a dream I suppose 😅 here’s hoping!!! 🤞🤞
Yes, and that is why I’m hopeful for more RISC-V development. One day, maybe, there will be first party manufacturers making open devices that work easily with any software of choice instead of proprietary vendor lock-in.
If they shared the same processing unit it could also cut their costs down.
I don’t ever see this happening, with Proton being x86, and games also predominantly being x86.
Seems like you haven’t looked at today’s commits to proton bleeding edge.
I seems to have not, but, how many games are compatible with ARM now? Surely it’s similar to the situation with game support on Windows ARM or MacOSX?
Edit: Hmm ok, they have a new “FEX” Translation later for ARM now. Interesting but I’m still not convinced that this will have better game support than Proton on x86.
