The Steam Deck Crushed It In 2023

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.

The Steam Deck was an amazing purchase for me. I put on EmuDeck and a bunch of ROMs and can play those from the Steam interface while also playing many of my Steam games and it's now a great all-arounder.

If only I could buy one.

I got my Deck around May, and yesterday I've finished 18th game this year, played exclusively on Valve's handheld. 2 games last week, since it was a holiday break.

I've finished Wall World + DLC, Spyro 1 (and started 2), Tunic, Contrast, A Short Hike, Cloudpunk, Assemble With Care, Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, Vampire Survivors, Webbed, The Last Campfire, and Sable. Replayed older games like Linelight, Expand, Scrapland, MDK 2, and Gift. Started Obra Dinn, Grim Fandango, Dome Keeper, Gunpoint, Ctrl Alt Ego, and Zelda BOTW.

This device is such a delight. It plays overwhelming majority of titles out of the box, while older titles like Gift and MDK 2 only require a few minutes of tinkering to get right, plus maybe adjust the control scheme for gyro aiming the sniper mode in MDK.

I wouldn't get even close to this number of titles on a classic PC. My gaming computer is at the same desk where I work from home, creating this unpleasant mental image that I'm still "at work" when gaming - so having an external device that handles AAA games like Hogwarts Legacy with ease is a godsend.

My desktop PC was down for two weeks due to fried motherboard. I connected the Deck via a simple JSAUX cable that has HDMI out and USB-C for charging, paired a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and it worked perfectly as a replacement. I could play Soldat 2, design in Figma, and watch movies - because it's a regular PC, just in an unusual form factor.

I'm definitely getting a SD2 when it comes out in a few years.

Got two friends to buy one after I got mine. Love it so much. I didn't think I would use it much when I first bought it, but I have played on it more in the last several months than my actual gaming PC.

Such a fantastic device, I stream movies and shows with it, listen to music while I game, go to LAN parties, use it with my family for couch co-op, play all my old GBA games on it, it's just awesome.

Now sell me one cowards

Mad props to those that have it and use it.i just can't find a use case

We play lethal company as a group and one of us plays on a steam deck. He can't use the monitor or figure out the walkie talkies, but he can at least play with us, so it's a win.

The Steam Deck was probably my favorite tech purchases in the past few years, and I'm looking forward to checking out the linked article to see where it goes with things.

I had been mulling over the idea of getting a portable for awhile, and truthfully Asus and Lenovo's offerings are pretty nice. I felt like they were all good enough, performance-wise, for the types of games I play, but battery life was a big enough concern for me that it held me back from actually buying one of these systems. After the OLED Deck was announced and specs on battery life were released, it eased my concerns enough that I felt like now was the time.

I do wish they had handled the launch a bit more gracefully, particularly as far as the limited edition goes. At this point it doesn't really matter, but it did etch away at some of the "magic" initially and undermined my confidence slightly when they couldn't keep the store operating, then said the special edition was out of stock, only for it to magically come back into stock after I'd already purchased the regular/standard Deck. Oh well.

Is this going to rival the Switch? Or will it end up like the PSP? They seem like a perfect balance to get all the games that aren't available on the Switch.

I have no idea why anyone would want a shittier PC with a tinier screen to play their steam library. It seems totally pointless to me. The only people I know who seem to rave about them are dads who can't get away to game except in half hour increments on the couch. I guess that's better than nothing, but fuck, that's a bleak gaming experience.