The Steam Deck is nearly everything that the Steam Machine and the Steam Controller wanted to be, somehow in a single package.
Valve’s work into Proton and the Steam Deck are the best things to happen to spur Linux adoption in the gaming sphere and support from devs. It’s made enough noise that putting intrusive DRM, anticheat and things that would make it incompatible with Linux would shut devs out of a sizeable demographic that will pay for good games that run well on Steam Deck. Previously Linux and their <1% share of users were an afterthought if anything. Honestly the main reason I preordered my Steam Deck was to support this, even though I’ve used mine just on and off and not much lately.
They’re so user friendly we opted to get my brother’s girlfriend’s 10 year-old sister one instead of a Switch. So instead of having 2-3 $40-$70 Switch games she got access to my Steam library through Family Share (limited to ~60 age-appropriate games), and 20 Switch games emulated through Yuzu setup by EmuDeck.
We’re also teaching her how to do all of this which will give her a huge advantage when it comes to using computers in the future, and allow her to emulate any games she would like going forward.
I’m excited for what comes out in a year or two. Maybe a Steam Box 2.0 with console-like qualities but tinker-friendly? A hardware refreshed Deck? Anti-cheat compatibility with more games?
Also, I have a Steam Controller and now a Deck, and the touch pads and gyro on the Deck are better in every meaningful way. It’s just a better experience all around.
And I felt better shelling out the money, because I knew at least some of that would wind up as a development investment in the Linux community.
