The steam deck will be unlocked and open

The steam deck is a portable gaming console scheduled for delivery in a few weeks that will be able to play most everything in your steam library. It will be like a nintendo switch but for the thousands of games available on your PC. Valve answers questions about the steam deck here. and they confirm this will basically be an unlocked x86 machine running linux.

I hope they can sand off the rough edges of running a modern linux OS. Big companies have claimed they were 'protecting the user' to excuse locked bootloaders, hardware restrictions, DRM, and all sorts of user hostile features. Most people don't care, which makes my life difficult because it matters to me and I have a hard time finding hardware that isn't infested with user-hostile hardware.

Despite their reliance on Proton (basically telling developers to continue developing for windows and letting the linux guys try to blindly figure how how to make it work on their machines) this FAQ is encouraging.

I'm adjacent to the target demographic. I'm not in the market for a hand held gaming device but I'm interested in the way it's developing. If it finds the support they're aiming for, I'll pick on up. I just really hope this doesn't fail like valve's other forays into hardware (the steam controller and the steam link).

I fully expect the worst from the gaming press as pointed out in the 6th entry of this post.. I expect complaints about battery life, poor performance when running demanding games at non-recommended settings, and a concerted effort to make it usable with windows (because an ever rotating handful of new DRM infested EA games will fail to work immediately in proton). If they can capture enough market share it might prompt huge game publishers be more careful about linux compatibility. If I could guarantee this by purchasing a steam deck I would do it today.

posted by na on January 25, 2022 20:34