A leaker has uploaded Valve’s “entire asset repository” online.
As spotted by PC Gamer, a poster by the name of Leakerwanderer has uploaded asset repositories of Valve games as they were in 2016, including Portal, CS: Source, Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat: Source, and Half-Life 2: Episodes 1, 2, and Half-Life 2 multiplayer.
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Despite being “threatened every time” – although by whom and why, we don’t know – Leakerwanderer took to Discord to say that they now “don’t care anymore” and uploaded the huge files, which include 61GB of Team Fortress 2 assets alone, including cut and modified content collated over many, many years.
“I don’t care anymore,” the leaker said on Discord. “I also did my toying around with it for a few years, did not upload because I was threatened every time.
A quick-and-dirty collage of some interesting icons in the tf2 leak I haven’t seen anyone mention yet
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“A real shame. I have no legal binding to these files. Not anymore.
“I have held onto these since 2016. Most of the file dates are from when I moved them after my computer blew up in 2019,” they added.
A cursory glance at the communities for these games is both intriguing and confusing right now, not least because some comedians are planting fan-made or fabricated “leaks” in amongst the real stuff, so getting through it all and identifying what’s real and what isn’t remains a bit of a challenge. It’s no doubt an absolute treasure trove for fans, though, especially those in the modding communities.
Oh, and just to be clear: nope, there’s nothing about Half-Life 3 in there. Sorry. But expect more revelations as fans pour through the contents over the coming days, weeks, and even months.
10 years after its introduction, Steam’s Big Picture mode has received a long overdue overhaul, with Valve finally making good on last year’s promise to replace the ageing UI with its decidedly more modern Steam Deck interface – albeit initially only for testing prior to a general release.
Valve has now replaced the old Big Picture mode with the far more modern UI created for its handheld gaming PC, Steam Deck. “This controller-first interface was designed for Steam Deck in handheld and docked mode,” Valve explained at the time, “and is perfect for all the scenarios Big Picture mode currently handles.”
On Thursday, Valve released a digital “booklet” all about the Steam Deck, Steam, and the company itself. Valve says it released the book ahead of the Steam Deck’s launch in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, but the book also happens to arrive on the six-month anniversary of when Valve sent the first order emails allowing people to buy their Steam Deck.
The 52-page ebook is free, and if you’re at all interested in Valve or the Steam Deck, I’d recommend flipping through it. Not only are there a few pages littered with Steam Deck prototypes, but you’ll also be able to read about Valve’s ambitions for the Steam Deck in its own words.
Perhaps the most notable part is that Valve is committing to the Steam Deck and SteamOS as a “multi-generational product line.” Valve has called the Steam Deck a “multi-generational category” in the past, but the company goes even farther with what it prints in the book (and because it’s printed in a book, it’s definitely that much more official):
Anyway, this is a multi-generational product line. Valve will support Steam Deck and SteamOS well into the foreseeable future. We will learn from the Steam community about new uses for our hardware that we haven’t thought of yet, and we will build new versions to be even more open and capable than the first version of Steam Deck has been.
After reading that, I’m already eagerly anticipating the Steam Deck 3, though hopefully the third entry of a certain video game series arrives before that does.
Valve also shared some interesting numbers about Steam, like that there are more than 130 million active players on Steam every month and more than 30,000 titles on the platform. And as of the publishing of the book, Valve says that more than 4,500 titles have the “Verified” or “Playable” designation for Steam Deck, meaning that approximately 15 percent of all games on Steam are already at the very least deemed to be “Playable.”
Since those first order emails went out in February, Valve has been ramping up its shipping volume, and on Wednesday, the company even said that some Q4 reservations were being bumped up to Q3. If you place a reservation today, Valve’s website says you won’t be able to order your device until sometime in Q4. But at the rate things have been improving, hopefully it won’t be too long until your order email hits your inbox — and while you wait, Valve has a book you can read.
Valve’s Portal, released in 2007 (!), is one of the last games you’d expect to see the humble little N64 being able to manage, and yet here we are in 2022, seeing it manage it quite nicely.
Programmer James Lambert has been working on a Portal demake for Nintendo’s system for a little while now, but in his latest development video he reveals that not only has he made some “huge strides behind the scene on the game engine”, but that he’s got the single most important thing working: the portal gun.
The video below shows a rough demonstration of Lambert’s progress, but even in this stage, it looks incredible. The portals attach to the walls—with some smart detection stuff in place to get around corners—and when you walk up to them you can look right into them and everything reflected inside them moves exactly as it should.
To give you an idea of how far this is pushing the hardware—remember, this isn’t something made to look like the N64, it’s actually being developed for the N64 and this video was captured on N64 hardware—Lambert says in the video that he would normally have some sound effects in the game by now, but that he wanted to “verify that the Nintendo 64 could even do portals” before doing it here.
In terms of how many views through a portal the N64 can actually support—so, like, how many times the room you’re in will be repeated by looking through a portal—in this video you can see him achieve a maximum of four, though Lambert says the final game will probably have to do a smaller number in order to keep things running smoothly.
If any of this looks vaguely familiar, it’s because Portal was also recreated—at least in part—by fans for the Nintendo DS a long time ago, which was also an impressive feat.
The Boeing CST-100 Starliner being lifted at the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.Photo: NASA/Frank Michaux
Hard to believe, but it’s been nearly two and a half years since Boeing’s first botched test of its Starliner CST-100 spacecraft. Yep, it’s been a minute, so here’s a recap of the past 28 tumultuous months, and how Boeing might finally make good on providing a viable commercial crew vehicle for NASA.
The two previous tests, one in 2019 (Orbital Flight Test-1) and the other last year (Orbital Flight Test-2), did not go well, to say the least. In the first test, the capsule made it to orbit but then glitched and never reached the space station. In the second, stuck valves kept Starliner on the ground. Boeing is developing this capsule under a $4.3 billion contract as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, but it has fallen badly behind schedule. The pressure’s now seriously on.
In preparation for this second attempt at OFT-2, the Starliner capsule is currently sitting atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, which is scheduled to launch from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 6:54 p.m. EDT on Thursday, May 19. Should all go as planned, the uncrewed CST-100 will dock at the International Space Station on Friday, May 20 at 7:10 p.m. EDT. Starliner OFT-2 is packed with around 500 pounds of cargo (mostly food), and the plan is to return 600 pounds of cargo back to Earth.
Conceptual view of Starliner CST-100 in space. Image: Boeing
Recent precedent being what it is, this itinerary is hardly a certainty. The problems that have plagued this program have run the gamut, from hardware glitches and software anomalies through to shoddy processes and organizational deficiencies. Boeing’s shortcomings as a NASA partner have been on full display over the past several years and amplified by the accomplishments at SpaceX, NASA’s other commercial crew partner. Elon Musk’s Crew Dragon has been shuttling astronauts to the ISS and returning them home for two years now.
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The launch of Boeing’s OFT-1 mission on December 20, 2019 was an early sign that things weren’t quite right. The capsule managed to reach space, but a software automation glitch caused the spacecraft to burn excess fuel, preventing it from reaching its target—the ISS. A subsequent investigation implicated a faulty Mission Elapsed Timer, which caused timings on Starliner and the rocket to go out of sync. Starliner miscalculated its location in space as a result, triggering the unfortunate fuel burn. Investigators also uncovered a coding error that could’ve led to an unsafe service module separation sequence. As if that weren’t enough, space-to-ground communications were unexpectedly lost during the OFT-1 test.
The botched test led an independent NASA-Boeing review team to issue 80 recommendations to Boeing, a lengthy to-do list that included improved testing and modeling, new development requirements, software updates, organizational changes, and operations tweaks. The ensuing effort to address these recommendations resulted in a 1.5-year delay to the Starliner program.
By August 3, 2021, Boeing was ready to perform the second test of Starliner, the OFT-2 mission, but the Atlas V rocket never left the launch pad owing to “unexpected valve position indications” in the capsule’s propulsion system. During the countdown, 13 of 24 oxidizer valves, which “connect to thrusters that enable abort and in-orbit maneuvering,” got stuck in the closed position, forcing the team to abort the launch and return the capsule to the Vertical Integration Facility for closer inspection.
Boeing engineers attending to Starliner after the failed attempt to launch in August 2021. Photo: Boeing
Engineers later determined that moisture somehow got onto the dry side of the oxidation valves, causing nitric acid to form, and that friction from the ensuing corrosion caused the valves to get stuck. Engineers blamed the humid Florida air for this unwanted moisture.
At a media teleconference on May 3, Steve Stich, manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said the issue “has been closed out” and that OFT-2 is once again ready to proceed. “It’s been a hard eight months, I would say, but very fulfilling in that we’ve resolved the problem with the oxidizer isolation valve,” he said.
Michelle Parker, vice president and deputy general manager for Space and Launch at Boeing, told reporters that the “spacecraft looks great” and it’s “performing great.” Boeing engineers were able to narrow down the root cause and implement measures to prevent a repeat, she explained. Parker said the team chose not to redesign the valves but instead added sealant and other components to keep moisture away. By “sealing the ambient moisture path,” she said, the team is hoping to avoid a recurrence. “If you eliminate moisture from the valve, you eliminate the [chemical] reaction,” she said. The ground team is now cycling the valves every couple of days to ensure functionality, Parker added.
When asked if another failed test would trigger the end of the NASA-Boeing commercial crew contract, Joel Montalbano, manager of NASA’s ISS program, said the space agency will continue to work with Boeing on the project and that no intention exists to stop now. “I suspect that we’ll learn from the test flight,” and then “go fly the crewed flight and then fly the post-certification missions,” he told reporters.
Indeed, a successful OFT-2 mission would set the stage for OFT-3—a crewed Starliner mission to the ISS. “We understand that we’re going to learn a lot from OFT-2, and that will dictate the schedule moving forward, but we have a target [to launch a crewed mission] at the end of this year,” Mark Nappi, Boeing program manager for the CST-100 Starliner mission, said at the May 3 press conference.
The issue with the valves, it would appear, is not over. Boeing is currently mulling the possibility of redesigning the propulsion valves. “A valve redesign is definitely on the table,” Nappi told reporters this past Wednesday. “Once we get all the information that we need, we’ll make that decision.” And as reported in Reuters, Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne are currently squabbling over who’s to blame for the faulty valves. Aerojet Rocketdyne and its lawyers are claiming that a cleaning chemical used by Boeing during ground tests caused the problem, a claim that Boeing denies, according to Reuters. Boeing’s acknowledgement of a potential valve redesign and its blame-game with Aerojet Rocketdyne are bad looks just before the OFT-2 launch.
A crewed Starliner test launch later this year would be grand, but we’d best not get ahead of ourselves. All eyes will be on Space Launch Complex-41 on May 19, in what’s becoming one of the most anticipated and pressure-packed launches of the year.
When Valve’s Steam Deck launched back in February, it could only certifiably run a (relative) handful of the platform’s 1000s of titles. The exact number was 399, but now, just a few weeks later, that figure has roughly tripled.
On February 25, the day of the Steam Deck’s launch, there were the 399 I just mentioned plus a further roughly 300 more that were listed as “playable”, but that might have some issues. Note that this list included games that ran fine, but had been designed with a big monitor and mouse in mind, and so maybe weren’t the best experience on a handheld device.
Anyone buying the Steam Deck in February (or earlier, really, since to get one then you would have had to preorder back in 2021) might have been concerned with the size of that list, and the fact that some of the biggest video game series around weren’t going to be playing nice with their new handheld.
Now that we’re in early May, though, things have already vastly improved. There are a number of places you can track the numbers of games playable on the system, but Boiling Steam have been putting them in chart form, so that’s what we’re looking at today.
As you can see, things mostly shot up during March and have slowed down since, but I’m looking at this as more of a “how far things have come since launch” kind of deal, not just an examination of the last couple of weeks. At time of posting, there are now 1289 games that are fully verified, and a further 1169 that are playable.
In practical terms, let’s apply those figures to my own Steam Library, since that’s how I took an informal look at support back when the system launched. In February, only 59 of my 810 Steam games were fully verified; now 131 of them are. That’s progress!
Which leads me to: this doesn’t mean games not on the list don’t work at all. It just means they haven’t been fully tested yet, so you can expect this number to keep on climbing as more and more results come in. And if you want to keep track of this stuff going forwards, Protondb is another great place to bookmark.
Valve’s new portable gaming computer the Steam Deck might be “going after” a completely different audience but it’s still drawn plenty of comparisons to the Nintendo Switch.
The final product is now in the hands of various tech and video game outlets, so what’s the final verdict, and what’s it like compared to Nintendo’s hybrid device? If you’re interested in knowing more about this new portable gaming system – read on! We’ve rounded up a series of reviews – many of which make reference to Nintendo’s hybrid hardware.
Beginning with a Steam Deck review by Polygon, here’s a sample of what the site’s editor-in-chief and co-founder, Chris Plante, had to say:
“The Steam Deck Shines as an ultra-powerful Switch…I enjoyed the Steam Deck most when I treated it like a powerful Nintendo Switch instead of a hybrid portable PC.”
“…I love the Nintendo Switch because it makes video games approachable to more people than ever before, allowing them to easily enjoy games at their convenience without any additional investment of time or space. No TV required — hell, no living room required. And I still believe that for newcomers, and people unfamiliar with PC gaming, Nintendo’s device remains the best starting point for this hobby.
“But for people who already have a Steam library, or are eager to dip their toes into the waters of PC gaming, the Steam Deck already feels like a legitimate alternative. It builds on the Switch’s pitch of playing anywhere and everywhere, because now my games and save files aren’t tied to a console. They live in the cloud, following me wherever I can access Steam — from my Steam Deck, to my gaming PC, to my work laptop, and wherever else I might want them in the future.”
Tom’s Hardware senior editor, Andrew E. Freedman, awarded the device four out of five stars and said the following:
“There’s a certain intimacy to playing games on the Steam Deck, the same way there is on the Nintendo Switch. Sure, I can play games on my rig hooked up to a monitor or a TV. But sometimes, I’m just more comfortable curled up on the couch under a blanket with a cup of tea in reach. That flexibility has encouraged me to play some games I might not have tried otherwise.”
Wes Fenlon of PC Gamer gave the device 85 out of 100 and said it was a system a “Leatherman guy would love”:
“The Steam Deck is a handheld gaming system a Leatherman guy would love. It was quite possibly designed by Leatherman guys at Valve, who decided that a handheld gaming PC would only work if it had a big screen, two big analog sticks, trackpads, and access to a proper Linux desktop underneath its friendly UI. The problem I’ve always had with Leathermans (please don’t be mad at me, Leatherman guys) is that the miniature scissors and other doodads are never as good as the proper tools they replace. And the Steam Deck isn’t completely immune to that jack-of-all-trades problem—after two weeks with it, it’s not a replacement for my desktop PC or as portable as a Nintendo Switch.”
Engadget senior editor, Jessica Conditt, awarded Valve’s new hardware 81 out of 100 and while she believes the Switch comparisons are “totally fair” it’s more like a hybrid of two older devices:
“A lot of people are going to compare the Steam Deck to the Switch, and that’s totally fair, but after spending more than a week with Valve’s portable PC, I think there’s a better analogy at hand: The Steam Deck is what happens when the Vita and the Wii U get drunk on Linux and make a big baby together.”
The IGN “in-progress review” by its executive editor, Seth G. Macy, mentioned the following:
“The Steam Deck’s LCD screen runs at 1200×800 at 60Hz, and it looks really good. I have no complaints about the resolution – at this screen size there’s a diminishing return on packing in extra pixels. I have to say, though, that the OLED screen on the latest model of the Nintendo Switch has spoiled me on handheld screens, and the Steam Deck doesn’t live up to the vibrance and clarity afforded by Nintendo’s latest update. But it’s still lovely, especially if you aren’t jumping back and forth between this and an OLED screen. Similar to the Switch, the screen is touch-enabled, so you can easily navigate through menus and even control some games with a quick tap here and a drag there.”
“…It’s interesting to contemplate that, with just a few accessories, this [Steam Deck] could be someone’s only PC and that wouldn’t be a terrible setup. When you factor in all of that multi-use capability, the extra cost above a Switch – which to this day still has no web browser or Netflix app – doesn’t seem unreasonable. It’s missing a camera, so you can’t use it for video conferencing, but aside from that it’s a decent little PC that easily handles light, everyday tasks but also plays games at a level you won’t find in other hardware around this price.”
So, there you go – some actual reviews of Valve’s Steam Deck along with some comparisons to Nintendo’s Switch. What are your own thoughts about the Steam Deck so far? Have you pre-ordered one? Do you see it as an alternative to your Nintendo Switch? Leave your thoughts down below.
Following a two-month delay, Valve’s Steam Deck will launch on February 25th. In a blog post the company published on Wednesday, Valve said it would open orders to the first batch of reservation holders that day. Those customers will have 72 hours to purchase the handheld. If they don’t use the opportunity, Valve will release their spot to the next person in the reservation queue. The first orders will then ship on February 28th. Moving forward, Valve says it plans open orders to more customers on a weekly basis.
Valve had planned to release the Steam Deck at the end of 2021, but due to parts shortages, the company pushed that date back. “We’re sorry about this — we did our best to work around the global supply chain issues,” Valve said at the time. “Components aren’t reaching our manufacturing facilities in time for us to meet our initial launch dates.”
Pricing for the Steam Deck starts at $399. That gets you a device with 64GB of eMMC internal storage and a carrying case. Valve will also offer models with 256GB and 512GB of NVMe storage. Those cost $529 and $649, respectively. The most expensive version also comes with a premium anti-glare screen. The Steam Deck’s custom chipset features a 2.4GHz processor and a GPU with eight RDNA 2 computer units. It also comes with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM. All of that creates a handheld PC Valve claims can run the latest games at a “very efficient” power envelope. Look to Engadget for a review of the Steam Deck come February 25th.
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On Friday, PC gaming giant Valve invited the developer community to learn more about its Steam Deck, a $400 handheld gaming PC with a comparatively powerful AMD chip. It’s akin to the Nintendo Switch of gaming PCs, and there’s a lot we already knew about the delayed handheld from its announcement, our trip to Valve’s headquarters, and an official teardown. But today, we learned even more.
Here are the highlights — unless, of course, you’d like to watch Valve’s entire livestream or breakout sessions for yourself. That’s fine too!
Aerith lives
The AMD chip inside the Steam Deck has a name: it’s the Aerith SOC, a clear reference to the famous Aerith from Final Fantasy VII. It’s an APU with a power envelope of between 4 and 15 watts, and it contains both an 4-core, 8-thread AMD Zen 2 CPU that runs between 2.4-3.5GHz, and 8 AMD RDNA 2 compute units worth of graphics clocked between 1 and 1.6GHz, for a total of 1.6 teraflops of raw graphical compute.
Here’s the Steam Deck’s entire block diagram, so you can see how the whole system comes together around that chip:
It interfaces with 16GB of unified LPDDR5 memory, with a total of 88GB/s of bandwidth. While there’s only 1GB of dedicated video memory, Valve says the GPU can access up to 8GB of that shared memory as needed.
Valve says the chip’s designed to run continually and consistently at its quoted clockspeeds: “The performance your game gets in the first ten seconds is likely to be the same performance you get two hours from now, or even indefinitely if you’re plugged into the wall,” says Valve’s Yazan Aldehayyat, adding that the system’s designed to perform the same docked, undocked, charging or not, even while downloading games or at an elevated temperature. “If you’re in Florida in July, you may run out of thermal headroom,” he says, but even then Valve says it’ll try to throttle downloads and transfer speeds before it throttles your game performance.
Valve does warn that developers may need to avoid pushing the GPU too hard if they want longer battery life. “We didn’t place any artificial limits on how much power the APU can consume.” As one specific tactic, Valve’s suggesting that games cap their framerate to save battery. That could make a big difference: “You can play Portal 2 for four hours on this thing. If you limit it to 30 FPS, you’re going to be playing for 5-6 hours,” Valve told IGN in August.
Another optimization: Valve revealed today that developers can upload versions of their games with lower-fidelity texture packages to Steam’s Depot to improve performance and reduce the amount of storage and time it takes a user to download a game. That’s similar to Microsoft’s Smart Delivery system for the Xbox One, Xbox One X and Xbox Series X/S, which routes the proper version of a game to each console. (But where Xbox developers are likely targeting 1080p, 1440p and near-4K respectively, the portable Steam Deck runs at 720p and 800p resolution.)
Designed to dock and stream
With a 45-watt power supply, Valve says the Steam Deck can charge and play at the same time, and power a 7.5-watt worth of external peripheral. The USB-C port also offers external display support for up to two 4K monitors at 60Hz (using Display Stream Compression), and Valve says you it’ll offer USB 3 Gen 2 “if you opt for half the display bandwidth.” The optional dock (which has yet to be pictured or go on preorder) will also offer Gigabit Ethernet.
And if you opt to play on a TV or monitor, you’ll probably be happy to hear the first full confirmation that Valve is supporting AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) upscaling with the Steam Deck. In fact, AMD representatives on the stream confirmed that not only does the Steam Deck work with FSR in games that support it — potentially making them look a bit better on the big screen — but that the Steam Deck will natively support FSR at an operating system level with a future update. AMD says it’s working on drivers that will enable the recently announced Vulkan Dynamic Rendering, too.
There’s no USB 4 or Intel-proprietary Thunderbolt here, obviously, and you’re only getting 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) instead of Wi-Fi 6 or 6E, but Valve says the Deck is optimized for “reliability and robustness even in congested environments.” That way, Valve can offer a “first-class Remote Play experience” to beam games from their desktop PC to the Deck inside their own homes, while using less battery than games natively running on the Deck’s hardware itself.
Valve did an great job with Wi-Fi engineering when it built the Steam Link HDMI puck, so I’m excited to test that.
Scant slowdown over SD (and eMMC)
The entry level $400 Steam Deck only comes with 64GB of comparatively slow eMMC storage and a microSD card slot for expansion — you’ll have to pay notably more for the faster models with NVMe SSDs, and even then they’ll be fairly easy to fill with a decent-sized Steam library of games.
But today, Valve assured developers that eMMC and SD aren’t that much slower: roughly 12 percent and 18 percent slower respectively when it comes to loading games. (Yes, the Y-axes are either mislabeled or don’t line up with the bar graphs.)
Valve says games 64GB eMMC Steam Deck might be 12 percent slower at loading a game and 25 percent slower booting, compared to the NVMe model.
18 percent slower loading a game from SD card. pic.twitter.com/X6HfKusY2X
— Sean Hollister (@StarFire2258) November 12, 2021
Boot times are 25 percent slower, but I suppose we’ll have to see how long they are in reality — Valve didn’t specify an actual number of minutes or seconds it takes for the Steam Deck to boot.
Valve’s changing how cloud saves work so you can pick up and play
But Valve is also thinking of the Steam Deck as an always-on device, one where you won’t always need to boot and launch games from scratch: there’s a suspend and resume feature built into the Steam Deck that should let you quickly pause games like you do on a Nintendo Switch.
Valve’s changing how Steam’s cloud save system works as a result: Where today’s Steam generally syncs your cloud saves after you’ve quit out of a game, the company’s offering new cloud APIs so developers can get their games to sync in the background at the time you suspend the title.
Theoretically, that could also mean you could pause a game you’re playing on the Steam Deck and quickly pick it up on your desktop PC, or vice versa.
There’s a white Steam Deck right out of Portal, but you can’t have it
It’s not for sale.GIF by Sean Hollister / The Verge
During the entire Steam Deck presentation, the backgrounds were filled with intriguing hints at Valve’s prototyping process, and many onlookers noticed a white Steam Deck among them — one straight out of Valve’s hit game Portal right down to the Aperture logo around back.
Unfortunately, it’s not for sale: “This is a prototype only. We love it too, but we’re not able to bring it to market at the same time we’re shipping the Steam Deck,” said Valve’s Greg Coomer, adding that the company intends to “look at other color options in the future, but that’s really down the road.”
Other tidbits
Here are some other random things we learned:
It’s not made for VR. “We definitely didn’t design and build the device for VR,” says Valve’s Lawrence Yang, while admitting that gamers will almost certainly try anyhow.
There are still no plans for 5G or LTE configurations. You can tether it to a phone, Valve says.
Valve is working to bring the Steam Deck to Japan and Australia in particular. Other territories as well.
Steam Deck has factory calibrated audio. “Every single Steam Deck has been calibrated at the factory for best performance” and includes a dedicated amp and DSP for the stereo speakers. It supports multichannel audio over HDMI (via USB-C).
Once Big Picture Mode on desktop Steam gets replaced by the Deck UI, it’ll get updated more often. There’s no timeframe yet for the switchover, but it’s good news for uniformity. “We can add new features to Steam and you’ll see them almost immediately on Deck.”
Valve will share keyboard APIs with multiple IMEs, multiple languages, and emojis.
We got our first look (I think!) at the Steam Deck notifications center and the new controller configurator to map your games to Steam Deck’s controls. More of that in this session.
In fact, we’ll leave you with whole bunch of Steam Deck user interface screenshots — we haven’t seen much of this before now.
The controller configurator lets you map and bind the Steam Deck’s considerable array of controls.
It’ll look the same across Steam desktop and Deck.
Notifications will have a dedicated button on Deck.
Universal search works across all of Steam, not just games.
Enlarge / Games that earn the “Deck Verified” checkmark will appear in the “Great on Deck” tab of the Steam Store.
Valve says it has started the process of reviewing all of the tens of thousands of games in the Steam catalog for compatibility with the upcoming Steam Deck portable. The company is doing the review as part of a new informational program called “Deck Verified.”
Games that provide “a great, smooth experience” and “work great on Steam Deck right out of the box” will receive a green “Deck Verified” check mark on the Steam store and library interfaces. They will also appear on the default “Great on Deck” tab when the Store is viewed on the Steam Deck itself. Games will receive that check mark if they meet the following criteria:
Input: Games must have “full controller support” and the ability to access all content using the Steam Deck controls, with no adjustments necessary. This includes the use of on-screen “glyphs” that match those of the Steam Deck buttons or those on the Xbox 360/One (many Steam games already do this for compatibility with console versions or console controllers). Any in-game text entry must be done using only the controller or an on-screen keyboard.
Display: Games must include native support for 1280×800 or 1280×720 resolution and include a default configuration that runs at a “playable framerate” on the hardware at that resolution (Valve has previously promised that “really the entire Steam library” can meet this threshold on the Steam Deck hardware). On-screen text should also be legible when the screen is held 12 inches from the face; Valve says this means no letter should be less than 9 pixels in height, though a 12-pixel height is recommended.
Seamlessness: Games shouldn’t throw up any compatibility warnings when running on Steam Deck, and players must be able to navigate any third-party launchers with the controller.
System support: The game must be compatible with the SteamOS natively or with the Proton compatibility layer that allows Windows games to run on the Linux-based system. This includes any middleware and/or anti-cheat software used in the game.
Enlarge / An example of a game that meets all the Deck Verified criteria.
Enlarge / Older games might need some updates to fully reach Deck Verified status.
Enlarge / VR games like Half-Life: Alyx will officially show up as “Unsupported” on the Steam Deck.
Games that don’t quite reach the Verified ideal can still earn a yellow “Playable” badge if they run but “require some extra effort to interact with or configure.” That includes games that require manual controller or graphics configuration on first launch, games with “missing or inaccurate controller glyphs,” and games where players need to use the touchscreen for whatever reason.
Other games will simply be listed as “Unsupported” on Steam Deck. Those include all virtual reality games and games that are incompatible with Proton (the latter group will have any compatibility issues logged by Valve to fix going forward). Games that haven’t yet been reviewed for Steam Deck compatibility will simply have their compatibility shown as “Unknown” in the Steam interface.
Let the reviews begin
Enlarge / Deck Compatibility badges will appear alongside the price on the Steam Store.
Steam developers can request a Steam Deck compatibility review for their games manually, but some back catalog games that “Valve identifies… as important to Steam Deck customers” will be added to the review queue “based on automated heuristics.”
The review process should take about a week, according to Valve’s estimates (subject to demand), after which developers will receive “detailed point-by-point results” of the review. After that, developers will have an opportunity to fix any outstanding issues and request a re-review before the results are published. Otherwise, any results will be automatically published after a week. Titles will be re-reviewed “as the developer releases updates or the Deck’s software improves,” Valve says.
While players can hook up the Steam Deck to a monitor and use a mouse and keyboard, Valve writes that “we believe most customers will be treating the Deck like a handheld appliance, most of the time.” The Deck Verified program will thus be focused on how games work when the Steam Deck is being used without any external peripherals.
Despite that, Valve’s developer guidelines make clear that “customers browsing the Steam store on Deck aren’t prevented from viewing or purchasing content that may not work well on their device… You’ll always have the option to run whatever you want on Steam Deck. After all, it’s your Deck.”
Enlarge / Browsing your Steam Library will make it clear at a glance which of your games are fully compatible with the Steam Deck.
Back in 2013, when Valve first tried to target console gamers with its Steam Machine hardware initiative, we suggested that the company roll out a certification program to set minimum standards for which games would run well on the wide variety of SteamOS-based hardware. The Deck Verified program fulfills some of that promise and should make it easy for Steam users to figure out how much of their library will work with this new Steam hardware at a glance.
Steam, the digital PC storefront, officially launched to the public 18 years ago today, on September 12, 2003. I didn’t realize just how old Steam was and by extension how old I’ve gotten. I guess time flies when your buying, downloading, and installing a bunch of games that you’ll end up never playing.
When Valve first launched Steam, people—including a few of my friends at the time—weren’t super happy about it. The idea of having to register a game via the internet, even a game you bought at a store on a disc, didn’t sit well with folks. But over time, as Valve improved the service, offered third-party games, and began doing seasonal sales, people warmed up to it. In May of 2007, it had nearly 13 million users. As of January 2021, it has over 120 million active users every month.
When it launched in 2003, it was a bit a of disaster. Servers collapsed. Players couldn’t log in and there wasn’t much to be found when you did make it in besides a few Valve titles and a terrible-looking UI. Things have gotten better since then.
The first game to require Steam was Valve’s own mega-sequel, Half-Life 2. It was released in 2004. The following year, Valve began cutting deals with third-party publishers to bring the first non-Valve games to the service. The first third-party game released on Steam wasRag Doll Kung Fu. It’s still available in 2021. It’s an odd fighting game that was made by some Lionhead (Fable) devs. You can buy it today for the low price of $1.
In May of 2007, there were around 150 digital games available to purchase on Steam. Earlier this year, Steam hit 50,ooo games. It’s estimated that every year since 2018 between 8,000 to 10,000 new games are uploaded to the storefront.
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I went digging through my Steam library and as far as I can tell, based on my memories and release dates, the very first games I bought on Steam were Day of Defeat Source and Half-Life 2. That seems about right.
Today, Steam might face competition from Epic and other publisher stores, but it’s still easily the biggest and most popular way for most PC gamers to get new games. But back in 2003, Steam seemed like a weird experiment from those Counter-Strike and Half-Life devs.
