|OT| Valve's Steam Deck - OLED refresh shipping to folks

Mivey

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Sep 20, 2018
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Is a hardware survey a reliable way of counting Deck units? I didn't have a hardware survey in like 6 months. Not on my PC, not on my Deck that I own for almost 2 months now.
Once we reach a million SteamDecks or so in the wild, I'd say it would be quite reliable , just based off of sample size alone. Meaning, that among such a large number of SteamDeck users, you'd expect there to be reliable sample of users that contribute to the surveys.
As long as the numbers indicate around 100K, I'd be a bit wary. I just don't trust this method to be so precise. I'd cautiously expect there to be an error of a couple hundred thousand.
 
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Arulan

Lizardman
Dec 7, 2018
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I've had my Steam Deck now for a couple weeks and it's incredible. There is something just amazing about having a complete Linux PC in your hands. I know most of us here are well aware of Valve's work over the past decade or so, but you can really see how all of their hardware/software initiatves over that span of time have come together to make this possible. Steam Input. Proton & Linux support. The Steam Controller. Big Picture Mode, now upgraded to this new UI. Remote Play.

I've said it before, but these features have made playing games a lot less restrictive. You can choose to use a controller, with or without developer support, and with advanced mapping features to get the most of it. With the Steam Link or Remote Play you don't have to play where your desktop is, but on potentially any display in your home. And they eventually upgraded that to support phones and connections outside of your network. The idea of being able to play all of your games, anyway you want, and wherever you want is a great one. And ultimately the Steam Deck is part of that idea, but improving on the quality of those experiences.
 

Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
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After having stumbled (and solved ?) on warpinator and syncthing yesterday, it’s time to redo my emudeck install on a bigger SD. What will break… sweating
Though I’m of half a mind to not use my 256 and buy a 512 SD, decisions decisions.

But I’m sorry to insist, my friends, which hub do you use ? :loudly-crying-face:
 

ZKenir

❀ Child of Raikou ❀
May 10, 2019
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my deck completely shat the bed, it got stuck in an infinite loop while unistalling a game I forced a reboot and now it doesn't see any game installed but 1 and yet the disk size is used up, feels like Microsoft Store v2 what the actual fuck.
Also doesn't see the micro sd card anymore (no the games that disappeared weren't installed there)

Guess I'll try a factory reset
 

Arc

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Sep 19, 2020
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I readily admit the hardware survey's accuracy is, at best, spotty.

I played some House Flipper and it is the first game I've played where the whole experience was accommodated to the Deck. There are Deck specific controller icons and the on-screen keyboard automatically pops up when inputting text and doesn't require using the Steam + X shortcut. The only downside is that playing at 60 FPS is a battery hog and only gives about 2 hours playtime. I lowered the FPS to 40 and get about 3.25ish hours.
 

Cacher

Romantic Storm
Jun 3, 2020
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Finished my first game on the Deck: Great Ace Attorney 1. Not the best port because it consumes too much power by default. I use TDP to limit the power and it still runs flawlessly even at 6w usage. Although this is a replay I still enjoyed my time with it. Going to play GAA2 next and I have finished the first two cases on 3DS, but I remember almost nothing regarding the story so this is going to a rather fresh experience.

But now, going to focus myself on Xenoblade 3 first because my gaming time on weekdays are fairly limited.
 

Knurek

OG old coot
Oct 16, 2018
2,437
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Finished my first game on the Deck: Great Ace Attorney 1. Not the best port because it consumes too much power by default. I use TDP to limit the power and it still runs flawlessly even at 6w usage. Although this is a replay I still enjoyed my time with it. Going to play GAA2 next and I have finished the first two cases on 3DS, but I remember almost nothing regarding the story so this is going to a rather fresh experience.

But now, going to focus myself on Xenoblade 3 first because my gaming time on weekdays are fairly limited.
The fan patch fixes the power draw issue and lets you play at 60 fps to boot.
 

EdwardTivrusky

Good Morning, Weather Hackers!
Dec 8, 2018
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My Deck turned up this morning. Of course, work is stupidly busy at the moment so it's sat on my bed still packaged until i can open it later.

I need to get my Amazon order in too. Getting a new usb-c to usb-c with PD cable, anker 45w Nano charger, new DP cable and a small simple hub. All stuff that "Gaming On Linux" has been using for weeks in their portable kit bag. I want to get a 512gb SD Card too for storing stuff that doesn't require super fast storage access.
 

LEANIJA

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May 5, 2019
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Austria

Epic Games employee doesnt like the Steam Deck, points out Fortnite* doesnt run on it. (also points towards Overwatch*, which does run, and Destiny*, which probably only isnt supported because of some contractual reasons or dumb management)

has to be satire, right? nobody can be that daft, right?

* and all three run if you install Windows, anyway
 

MomoVideo

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I could point out one company that sole purpose in recent years is to fragment the PC space. I don't know, maybe he heard about this company called Epic? Oh right, he works there. I guess it's a requirement to be this ignorant to work there. I just can't with this kind of hot takes. Anyway...


Note: This update is for the Steam Deck Beta and Preview channels, and includes new features that are still being tested. You can opt into this in Settings > System > Steam Update Channel.

  • Added ability to adjust image display settings for external displays that have overscan issues
  • Fixed issues with some images being too large when viewing guides in the overlay
  • Fixed spoiler tags in guides to be selectable so that they can be revealed
  • Fixed issue with medium length game names in the Main Menu Overlay not properly scrolling
  • Fixed Achievements page not updating properly when a new achievement was earned
 
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OP
prudis

prudis

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fascinating
seems like steamdeck picks up the family shared libraries without being specifically "authorizied " for it
only i problem iot has that it doesnt have the "XYZ's Library" collection visible on deck so didnt found a way to see it other than creating special nondynamic collection for it
 

LionelInoe

Linux Advocate
Jul 13, 2022
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Not to pile onto that Epic Games guy any more than necessary, but it's completely hilarious how Epic Games doesn't look at the Steam Deck as potential leverage against Apple and Co. during higher court proceedings. Not to mention the Steam Deck represents a "switch but not" style device where, if Epic Games Store was native to Linux, they would be able to make sales on the device without paying a cent to Valve. In general, if it wasn't for the stubbornness of Epic Games, they would be in a very good position to sell games to people who bought Valve hardware while Valve is likely not high on the profit margins for each device sold. The irony is that Epic Games would be hurting Valve more by supporting Linux than by choosing to not be present on the device at all!
 

meschio94

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Aug 21, 2021
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Not to pile onto that Epic Games guy any more than necessary, but it's completely hilarious how Epic Games doesn't look at the Steam Deck as potential leverage against Apple and Co. during higher court proceedings. Not to mention the Steam Deck represents a "switch but not" style device where, if Epic Games Store was native to Linux, they would be able to make sales on the device without paying a cent to Valve. In general, if it wasn't for the stubbornness of Epic Games, they would be in a very good position to sell games to people who bought Valve hardware while Valve is likely not high on the profit margins for each device sold. The irony is that Epic Games would be hurting Valve more by supporting Linux than by choosing to not be present on the device at all!
Valve approach on all this EGS shithole from 2018:

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
Napoleon Bonaparte
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
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The way I see it, is Valve cared a lot about VR exclusives inasmuch as they paid VR developers to not go exclusive.

I don't think we have any evidence they did the same when a developer was indicating they were going to sign with EGS. Maybe they didn't want to set a precedent for that (AAA publishers are, after all, incredibly greedy and it could be damaging in the long term) or they could've perceived the EGS and its strategy as not being much of a threat to their plans.

Given Steam has outpaced EGS in growth since the EGS launched, despite all the exclusives Epic had to pay for, I think they probably made the right call.
 
OP
prudis

prudis

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I don't think we have any evidence they did the same when a developer was indicating they were going to sign with EGS. Maybe they didn't want to set a precedent for that or they could've perceived the EGS and its strategy as not being much of a threat to their plans
pretty sure we have evidence of opposite of in the early EGSclusive times ... iirc one of the dev/pub that signed EGSclusivity did mentioned that they did go back to valve to ask for "better offer" and was told something like "lol nope"
 
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Mivey

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Valve paying for devs to stay on Steam would be a huge waste of money. Steam is the biggest marketplace on PC, one that doesn't need artificial exclusives to get everyone's attention and keeps growing unabated.

Paying to assure VR games stay open and are available on Steam might make more sense, as it's a much smaller market and Valve really wants PCVR to keep growing.
 

Arc

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July's survey data is up and I think attempting to tie that data to Deck sales figures can effectively be thrown out. Firstly, in my last post, I made an error in my previous post. There were 1.18% Linux users and not 1.8%.

Using the correct calculation for June, you would get ~118k Decks (132 million * 0.0118 Linux share * 0.0757 Deck APU share).

Using July's data, you would get ~123k Decks (132 million * 0.0123 Linux share * 0.0756 Deck APU share).

I find it impossible to believe that Valve only shipped 5,000 Decks in a month, especially when July was supposed to be when they began doubling shipments. It's safe to say the survey data is not helpful for determining Deck sales.

Not to pile onto that Epic Games guy any more than necessary, but it's completely hilarious how Epic Games doesn't look at the Steam Deck as potential leverage against Apple and Co. during higher court proceedings. Not to mention the Steam Deck represents a "switch but not" style device where, if Epic Games Store was native to Linux, they would be able to make sales on the device without paying a cent to Valve. In general, if it wasn't for the stubbornness of Epic Games, they would be in a very good position to sell games to people who bought Valve hardware while Valve is likely not high on the profit margins for each device sold. The irony is that Epic Games would be hurting Valve more by supporting Linux than by choosing to not be present on the device at all!
While it didn't make any difference in the Apple trial, the judge acknowledged the Deck as an example of how a company can get into the handheld gaming market.

Also for what it's worth, I don't think EGS supporting Linux would be worth it for Epic. While adding alternative stores is technically possible, the SteamOS experience is so smooth that I don't think most users care about veering out of the Steam ecosystem. I've said it before, but sticking to SteamOS and Verified and Playable games has gave me an extremely close console-like experience which is frankly a major boon for someone like me who isn't too technically savvy. I know tinkering is possible, but I don't want to tinker. Supporting alternate stores is simply more of a talking point than the point.
 

Mivey

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Sep 20, 2018
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Supporting alternate stores is simply more of a talking point than the point.
Disagree on this one. I agree that most users will probably never bother with alternative stores, but the fact that you can (more or less easily) set-up GOG, Uplay or even Epic Game Store titles on the Deck is a natural consequence of the openness of the SteamDeck. And this openness isn't a talking point, it's a key selling point. It's a PC, you can do and install whatever you want with it.

Having an official Linux app that you can install via Discovery would be a huge boon to all these alternative stores, especially if they make use of Proton for Windows-only titles. This would make it much easier to set them up on the Deck, as things like Lutris are by their nature less stable and more likely to break some games. If the Deck really does sell millions of units, I could see all this happening.
 
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Arc

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Valve is expanding Deck sales to Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. I know they had mentioned Japan and Australia sales by the end of the year so maybe Aussies will be able to buy it sooner rather than later.


interesting mix of things
I contributed to Multiversus and Monster Hunter.
 
OP
prudis

prudis

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Steam Deck Now Available for Pre-Order in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

Nzyme

Time to get Fit
Sep 19, 2018
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Here are the starting prices elsewhere, according to Valve:
  • NT$ 13,380 in Taiwan
  • HK$ 3,288 in Hong Kong
  • KRW 589,000 in Korea
Each translates to around $450 USD.


We are happy to announce today that Steam Deck is expanding to more regions. With the help of Komodo, Steam Deck will ship later this year in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

We have worked with the team at Komodo for years, and are excited to have their help as our authorized reseller of Steam Deck in these regions. Komodo has just opened reservations on their website here at steamdeck.komodo.jp. Customers with reservations in these new regions will be able to order their Steam Decks starting later this year. The Komodo reservation queue is separate from the reservation queue in NA / UK / EU regions, so the timing of order emails in the currently shipping regions isn't impacted by this announcement.

We're very excited to make Steam Deck available in more places around the world, and hope players in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong will love Steam Deck as much as we do. To help introduce players to Steam Deck ahead of availability in these regions, we are working with Komodo to put together a large booth at the Tokyo Game Show, which will include a large hands-on section. Please stop by if you happen to be in town during TGS, we'd love to see you.

That's all for today, more news soon.
 

ExistentialThought

Coffee Lover ♥☕
Feb 29, 2020
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Really happy more folks can get their hands on the Steam Deck. The pricing is a bit here and there, but I imagine with how volatile everything is, there is a bit of hesitancy in pricing.

There was just some speculation that if Japan was going to be announced, it would be announced soonish, I did not expect it to be the very same day as that conversation.
 

Joe Spangle

Playing....
Apr 17, 2019
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Had to go to the office today to wait for the Broadband guy as its been out for a couple of weeks. Nothing much to do without the internet so i took the Deck in and played Advance wars whilst i waited.

Time slot for the engineer was 8-1. What time did he turn up? 12.50. Classic BT.
 

FunnyJay

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Getting interested in aquiring a Steam Deck.

How does it handle games that are more mouse based for example? I am speaking as someone who has no experience of the old Steam controller...
 

LionelInoe

Linux Advocate
Jul 13, 2022
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Getting interested in aquiring a Steam Deck.

How does it handle games that are more mouse based for example? I am speaking as someone who has no experience of the old Steam controller...
It handles it from fine to excellent, depending on the type of game.

"Fine" is probably reserved for mostly RTS games and their ilk, where I would recommend not trying to do anything too crazy. The controller is still a controller interface after all, so I wouldn't be trying to do anything like competitive RTS gameplay. City builders and slow single player experiences would probably be best.

For most other types of games it works really great. You'll have to get used to sometimes seeing button prompts for a keyboard and internally translating that to the appropriate steam input binding, but thankfully it's actually really easy to catch those bindings at a glimpse in the steam overlay menu.

I played all of Half Life 1 on the device as my first "Steam Deck" game, which has no controller support, and it worked great after a little bit of controller tuning and configuration. I also tried out a bit of Torchlight on the deck and the controller settings did a reasonable job for the most part, but I eventually resumed to using the touch pad for that game instead.
 

Mivey

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Sep 20, 2018
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Getting interested in aquiring a Steam Deck.

How does it handle games that are more mouse based for example? I am speaking as someone who has no experience of the old Steam controller...
It depends on well you can get used to the touchpads. They are incredibly versatile, and can be tuned a lot to match whatever haptic resistance and sensitivity you like.
As for my personal experiences playing KBM games on the Deck, games that just require clicking via the mouse, like P&C adventure games, work excellently. For games with more complex KBM setups, like the old Gothic games, you need to use SteamInput to bind everything to buttons, touchpads and the back pedals. Luckily, there was already a near perfect community profile that Steam chose for me.
If it wasn't for some bugs with Proton, which led to the background music being broken, I'd have loved to play these old games again on the Deck. It worked and played far better otherwise, then I'd have expected.

I haven't tried any RTS games, though.
 
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MomoVideo

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Halo Infinite get's in-game on Proton Experimental. There are some bugs still, and some folks report that they are getting disconnected if they are not a host. We are almost there.
 

FunnyJay

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Probably a stupid question, but are game saves that utilize Steam Cloud compatible between Steam Deck and a Windows PC?

I'm aware that it might differ on a game by game basis, but I thought if there were any compatability issues between a linux game save and a windows game save, so a save from the deck might not load on Windows and vice versa.
 

jads653

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Probably a stupid question, but are game saves that utilize Steam Cloud compatible between Steam Deck and a Windows PC?

I'm aware that it might differ on a game by game basis, but I thought if there were any compatability issues between a linux game save and a windows game save, so a save from the deck might not load on Windows and vice versa.
If you are running the game under Proton, compatibility is 100 procent. You are basically running the windows version of the game under a comptability layer. Linux native is hit and miss but native Linux games are pretty rare these days. So it should not really matter.
 

MomoVideo

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Also if the game has a Linux version and it turns out the saves are not compatible, you can still download the Windows version and run it with proton to have no issues with save compatibility.
 

FunnyJay

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Also if the game has a Linux version and it turns out the saves are not compatible, you can still download the Windows version and run it with proton to have no issues with save compatibility.
You get to choose what version to download?
 

Mivey

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You get to choose what version to download?
You can chose which version of Proton to use. For native titles, this field is initially just turned off, but if you select a version of Proton, it will then download the Windows version. And you can go back to Linux again.
Save games saved on Steam Cloud are a problem here in some cases. You can just manually get the saves yourself from Steam and move them to the right location.
 
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FunnyJay

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Just to be clear, save games (and their locations) from Windows sometimes are a problem if you choose to run Proton?

And.... I placed a reservation for the 512 Gb model....
 

Mivey

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Just to be clear, save games (and their locations) from Windows sometimes are a problem if you choose to run Proton?
No, if you use Proton you are fine. Proton allows you to run Windows versions on Linux.
We were just discussing if you can "switch" from the native Linux to using Proton. And you can do that, but then you will also switch between save game "dimensions" if you will. This is btw, not an insurmountable problem either. Most games where i have tried to run the Linux version with save games from Windows accept the exact same format. You just have to copy the save games yourself, Steam won't do it automatically.
 

kio

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Apr 19, 2019
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Over the past week or so I've been experiencing my first big disappointments with the deck.
I want to play the banner saga 3 but since I played the other 2 games so long ago I decided to replay them both on the deck, as both are verified so I thought I wouldn't have any problems with them.
The first game, during the first 3h or so, had crackling sound that thankfuly disappeared and also crashed on me multiple times throughout all of the game, being the first game ever to do it on the deck.
The second game had a nightmarish setup phase because finding the first game save file to import wasn't easy and the UI was less than ideal but the worst thing is that it crashes constantly, much more than the first game.

I can't understand if this is the games' fault or something wrong with the compatibility layer but it has been a less than ideal user experience.
 
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ZKenir

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Here's a little round-up of some interesting bits:

  • There's plenty of continuity between their previous hardware and the Steam Deck, with lots that helped to complete the Steam Deck like working on the Valve Index helped their production lines. Steam Link helped towards Remote Play and so on. Valve Index controller for example was an important stepping stone in regards to dealing with batteries.
  • Valve confirmed again that they will "only use Proton when there's no Linux version of a game", however they learned from Steam Machines and working with developers to get Linux ports that it often wasn't worth it and why they worked on Proton. Since the Steam Deck, it's been far easier to get Proton working for new release as they've been working with developers.
  • Linux is a benefit to them since it's open source, as it means they can work to fix issues and features quicker than reporting it to someone else and keep improving as they don't have to report it to someone else and wait on them.
  • Japan was on their list to ship the Steam Deck to from day 1 but they had to work out the distribution.
  • They think the Steam Deck will be a multi-generational product, they expect there to be future iterations and they're finding the right balance to give developers a stable product to target but they wish to follow the PC model of constant improvement. No time span yet.
 

fantomena

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Dec 17, 2018
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I expect a ton of people in the industry is getting or already have gotten a Steam Deck. Phil, Shuhei, Druckmann and Cory I know already has one. Another dev from Sony Santa Monica.


I have no doubt that a lot of industry people wanna play their games on the Steam Deck.
 

Alexandros

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I expect a ton of people in the industry is getting or already have gotten a Steam Deck. Phil, Shuhei, Druckmann and Cory I know already has one. Another dev from Sony Santa Monica.


I have no doubt that a lot of industry people wanna play their games on the Steam Deck.
That is very good news. Developers themselves being excited for the device bodes very well for game support and verification.