Phoronix article: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Machines-Frame-2026
Also listed here: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/hardware
Valve has already sent support for the new Steam Controller upstream: https://www.phoronix.com/news/New-Steam-Controller-SDL
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Time to sell my never used old steam controller
Glad Valve is making a console but that’s an ugly fucking controller
FEX is the most exciting thing for me!
I hope this somehow manages to convince fortnite / ea to support it or support linux. I want to get rid of my xbox so bad.
also i am excited for the headset, i am wondering how open source it is going to be and depending on that i definilty get one (Since it runs steam os, linux is possible atleast definitly)
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Im hyped for a new vr headset.
Fuck you Microsoft!
I’m curious about the “it’s a PC” aspect of the Steam Box. Because a device that plays all Steam games but isn’t a Windows computer is extremely appealing, but I admit if I can’t install a few non-Steam games on it, that’s a spoiler for me. But if the whole “it’s a PC” provides some avenue to that, I’m definitely ready to stop building a gaming PC every 5 years.
I’m really hoping that the price of the vr headset meets or beats the Facebook models.
The announcement did not include Copilot? No mention of 300 useless AI features being shoved down our throats??!
It’s wild how by virtue of the fact that Valve isn’t a publicly traded company beholden to shareholders, the same Valve which has a history of putting out half-baked goods and which has an always-on DRM client called Steam, seems poised to surpass most of its competitors both in the user privacy and hardware hardware spaces with just straightforward products. They have a product to sell, and that’s it. They don’t need to micro-optimize for bullshit like seemingly every other large tech company does.
It feels like just yesterday that VR was the big hype tech.
VR has actual staying power though. It genuinely adds a lot to a game or a simulation. VRchat especially is like a deeply emotional thing to folks who don’t feel like they belong in their real bodies and can exist in VR a more true representation of themself
VR is so fucking cool tho
To be 100% honest, I like Bitcoin and LLMs too. Could use some pigouvian taxes though.
BTC is neat and I do have some, but I didn’t get into LLMs, no use case for me at this point. But I think VR is in a completely different bucket. VR was so fucking awesome for my partner and myself to chill out in with our friends in 2020 when we couldn’t go out and see peeps. It’s also easily the best most fun form of exercise.
I’m sure you and your partner can think of a more fun form of exercise. 😉
That’s because they make an insane amount of money by taking 30% of every sale on their platform, which nearly everyone uses because they’re a near monopoly and the alternatives are terrible. Around $3.5 Million per employee, nearly 5x the next highest company, which is Facebook at around $780,000 per employee.
I should note that 30% is incredibly standard in the industry, and Valve offers a LOT more for that 30% than literally any other digital publisher. Physical publishers take substantially more, and the only digital store that offers less is EGS, which is simultaneously absolute dogshite and also has been trying very, very hard to astroturd the ‘30%’ thing for ages.
Nintendo, Sony, and Apple all take 30%. I think MS does as well, but don’t quote me on that one.
don’t forget google. that applies to all paid apps, in app purchases and donations on the play store, not only for games. google also forbids you from showing any other donation option on your website if you link to it from your app.
I’m going to be honest, I have no idea how I forgot google. They also definitely take 30%.
Can confirm; my app was removed from the Play Store due to a donation link to my PayPal. Absolutely insane.
Fwiw, GOG has no DRM for their titles (its own niche space, not competition). Not sure if they charge 30% too, but even in such case they’re giving you more because of the lack of DRM.
Steam is quite virtuous, they gave us Proton. But is far from being based.
GOG has no DRM, but they also don’t offer the same kind of services, like workshop, updates, cloud sync, etc.
Not trying to say they’re worse or anything, I love GOG, but it’s really kind of comparing apples to oranges here.
GoG also sold the modern hitman games which have DRM.
There are also many games on Steam that are DRM free, you may need to use the Steam Client to download them (but possibly also Steam CMD) but then you can copy the files off as a backup and run them without Steam
Can confirm. Serious Sam Classics are copy and paste-easy to share
“Over 5,000 games released on Steam this year didn’t make enough money to recover the $100 fee to put a game on Valve’s store, research estimates”
It’s fucking wild. Like, I love Steam, don’t get me wrong, but holy shit just suck less (edit: than other stores do) and charge less (edit: of devs) and you could gobble up a lot of that market share. But none of them do.
Notably Epic charges less than 30% (something like 12% IIRC) to try to get more of that market. They even give away games. But their app is still inferior so it gets less use.
Because Epic doesn’t care about end users and won’t add necessary end user features like reviews.
It’s cool that Epic wants to pay developers more, but the way they disregard the consumer makes the platform non-viable
company: “I want what steam is making and more” shareholders: “brilliant”
“I want what steam is making but I’m not willing to improve service OR charge less!”
Most other competitors charge less than steam, but steam has a clause which prevents devs from putting their games cheaper elsewhere. This is the real big shitty move made by valve, otherwise they do mostly everything right. I hope someone challenges this clause in a court of law someday, it looks very monopolistic to me
Except that is a thing only for selling steam keys outside steam. There are no price parity clauses.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
Also here is a gamedev saying that they’ll sell their game for a cheaper price on EGS: https://twitter.com/HeardOfTheStory/status/1700066610302603405
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/heard-of-the-story-ff3758
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1881940/Heard_of_the_Story/
If what you saying was actually the case I am 120% sure Tim Sweeney would be all over it lol.
Lastly, there was ALREADY a case like that (Valve vs. Wolfire). The courts couldn’t find anything regarding Wolfire’s claims and then dismissed the case.
Ho ok, my bad, I completely misunderstood the issue then. It seems reasonable to impose a price equivalence on steam key
No worries! And indeed!
It’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
Word that stands out is comparable. Which provides a lot of flexibility on discounts outside the steam store. And isthereanydeals data that tracks all the prices over the years shows steam keys going on sale for cheaper than the steam store. Steam also takes 0% of Steam keys.
Recent example is ARC Raiders. https://isthereanydeal.com/game/arc-raiders/info/
Current best price is 15% off for $34.16 versus $39.99 on Steam. And all time low was $31.92.
I do wonder how many people assume Steam store price is the best price, and end up paying more than they’d have to if they checked isthereanydeals. Since I’ve come across some comments that believed Steam did not allow cheaper prices as though it were fact despite reality not being the case.
Around $3.5 Million per employee, nearly 5x the next highest company, which is Facebook at around $780,000 per employee.
that’s a bullshit metric only useful to incite hatred. why the fuck do you want to say that valve is “this many times worse than facebook!”? it is obviously false.
only thing this proves is that they have relatively few employees. which also probably means that most of them do real work instead of being overloaded with managers
The numbers just show that they are 8x as efficient. I only referenced Facebook because they’re the next closest company for comparison.
I never said they were worse than Facebook. That’s your assumption, reading what you want, not what’s actually being said.
Their efficiency is largely due to their flat organizing structure. They have no real hierarchy to speak of.
Which is also one of the reasons so few new things get done, and why they (until now) haven’t been able to count to 3.
To get anything done you either have to be able to do it entirely by yourself which is unlikely, or get enough others organized and on board to make it happen.
What? Valve released CS2 like last year? They do stuff all the time. They have like three games they’re actively maintaining while making HL3 and three new pieces of tech? This is a wild, unfounded take and feels ideologically bound.
That was 2023, and one of very few things made not to specifically promote their hardware or as a cheap spinoff of existing IP. And define “actively maintaining”, because general bug fixes for decade old multi-player games and managing item marketplaces doesn’t require much manpower.
Going further back there’s Aperture Desk Job which was a tech demo for the Steam Deck in 2022. Then an extended cut version of Artifact originally meant as a sequel in 2021, which is a Dota 2 card game, but still remains unfinished, so effectively abandoned. Then Half Life: Alyx in 2020 which 90% of gamers can’t play because it’s VR only, and clearly made to further promote their VR hardware. Dota Warlords in 2020 which was originally a community game mode. The original Artifact in 2018, which had abandoned iOS and Android ports. The Lab in 2016 which was made to promote the launch of the HTC Vive. A zombie CS spinoff in 2014, Dota 2 in 2013, CS:Go in 2012, Portal 2 in 2011, and Left 4 Dead 2 in 2009.
If you remove the spinoff and niche stuff from the list you get game releases in 2023, 2020 (arguable since it’s VR only and thus inherently niche), 2013, 2012, 2011, 2009.
That’s a pretty big gap of not much for the last decade game-wise. Its been previously documented and published that Valve has issues getting games developed because of the flat organization structure. Articles like this.
You‘re getting downvotes for no reason. Also anyone who ever had to contact Steam support felt how criminally understaffed they are so it makes sense they make tons of money per employee I guess.
As if normal for companies to say you know what we are getting enough profits lets not monetize things even more.
They need their products to be as clean as possible to hook people into microtransactions and their proprietary platform. Valve is a for profit company and the ceo owns a fleet of mega yachts
Why does the controller look very uncomfortable to use? I hope it’s not.
Valve really listened to Saejima’s advice:
Steam Synapse when?
2026 Year of the Linux desktop?
Surely this will bring over a lot of people to Linux
Year of the Linux living room
Not gonna lie the controller looks ass but maybe it feels fantastic so I‘ll wait with my final judgement. I‘m interested to see how they will try to push VR since most users are still incredibly uninterested in it.
I’ve wanted to get into VR for the longest time but they all seemed like extremely walled gardens. This sounds awesome to me.
I’ve got a Meta Quest 2 as a hand-me-down and yes, it’s extremely locked down. It’s possible to use a third-party app store, but to make it work you have to get a developer account with Meta and enable wireless debugging.
I also recieved a quest 2 recently, any good guides on getting it set up with third party apps that you found?
I haven’t tried it myself yet, but I hear the SideQuest app store is the place to go.
The problem is to really make an informed decision you have to try it first-hand. The sensory experience unlike any other device, so descriptions aren’t super helpful, video doesn’t convey what it’s actually like, so you really have to experience it to understand it.
Also given how common it seems to be anecdotally to get sick from it, no one wants to jump in just to have to jump back out.
And unless you know someone that already jumped in and can try theirs, a lot of people like me just don’t want to commit sight unseen. (I mean I’m also broke, but this would be true anyway)
I don’t have a way to try it out, so until I do it’s not on my radar to care. I’m very curious about it. Even if I don’t like it I do really want to see what it’s like at least once. But I’m not gonna pay for that chance. It’s gotta impress me without effort on my part (more than driving to it anyway).
Also given how common it seems to be anecdotally to get sick from it, no one wants to jump in just to have to jump back out.
you can build a resistance to it. It takes time, and it was the case for me
Maybe so, but you probably need to enjoy your first exposure to want to drop money on an entire setup for it.
It’s already crazy enough to drop that money just hoping you like it, but if you drop it hoping it stops making you nauseous, that’s a much bigger ask.
I’m still hoping I won’t have that problem. I do get car sick on meandering drives, but not even close to as bad as I did 10-15 years ago, but the worse the drive gets, the more I have to stay staring out the car windows.
I assume the VR effect would be similar, given it’s a similar symptom, but backwards. (In VR you don’t feel motion, but you see it, whereas in a car, you feel it, but either don’t see it from not looking, or if you have wide visibility it looks like you’re not moving as much compared to the background)
As someone who used to get sick in cars and boats, I got it, so you might as well
If the technology interests you, then sick or not, you’ll probably like it. Won’t play every day, but it’ll be a nice experience.
Start with games with not a lot of motion (beat saber for example), then move to more intensive games. You’ll get sick after 15mins, then 20mins, then 25… until you last for a couple hours, and at this point you’ve built your resistance.
Just stop playing when you feel sick and try again an hour later when you feel better or a few days later
But yea, VR isn’t straightforward or an obvious purchase. It requires time and will, and money, obviously
It’s clearly a luxury and you need to have too much money or be really motivated to purchase it
Personally that’s what I’d like to do anyway. I’m saying that to discuss the growth of the technology among the masses.
Assuming it doesn’t make me violently ill, i like tech and gaming enough to keep it around otherwise. But the potential for the issue and the committal involved off the bat are difficulties for any new, different-enough tech.
I’m someone who has gotten sick in cars before (rarely) but I have done a lot of crazy stuff on VR and never felt remotely sick. I’m an outlier though
For most of my life VR has been, ‘VR is a great way to experience shitty games and you just have to pay a grand or more for this interactive tummy ache, and your unit may not be supported next year! Buy!’
I’m going to hold out until I can pick up one of these at the pawn shop for a bill.
I got an Index for cheap last year and was very excited to play a number of my favorite games with optional VR mode. Turns out:
- the Index ecosystem is more accessible than expected. 2) the games I was looking forward to all played like ass and made VR seem like a stupid gimmick. 3) In a desperate move that felt like sunk cost fallacy, I tried several VR-only games, and got TOTALLY hooked on modded Beatsaber. This itself made the buy-in worth it.
VR-only games
For the most part VR “ports” of traditional games are not worth buying. The developers usually put 0 effort into them. There are exceptions like sim racing titles, but for the most part games developed specifically for VR will be way better designed
‘VR is a great way to experience shitty games
Have you tried Half-life: Alyx?
I recommend you give that, or something equivalent, a go without even buying any hardware. Either ask a friend or go to an arcade. You don’t need to shell out a grand to try.
If you hate it, move on.
Edit! I’m a 90s kid, and I’m really disappointed that VR hasn’t taken off the way scifi suggested it would. Back then, being absorbed in pure information sounded awesome, but now it is just going the way of 24/7 misinformation advertisements and micro transactions.
I’ll hold off on VR until there is a decent open source unit that isnt $800.
I remember trying the first VR headset game 1990 that ran on a Commodore Amiga in like 7 fps and was terrible in every way.
Yegods. My first foray into VR was at a high end arcade at North Pier in Chicago. I think the game was Dactyl. The headset was super heavy and none of the goals of the game were explained to me. I basically wandered around for five minutes, shooting green polygons in the sky, then time was up.
Dad was pissed that he’d blown $20 on it.
Edit: For historical reference, in the mid 90s $5 could keep your kids occupied at a regular arcade for a couple hours. $20 could have gotten us a couple of movie tickets and some Twizzlers.
I’d of been angry too.
I think that’s the same game I queued up for like 90 mins at a computer fair to have a few minutes of very confused playtime and that was it.
I remember seeing the Virtuality kits on TV in the 90s.
Clearly absolutely unplayable nonsense, and yet I still wanted to play on one.
It took so long for hardware to catch up.
I mean, you can certainly pick up a used Quest 2 if you wanted to try it out. There’s a handful of exclusive stuff in the Quest store you’d be able to use, but not much of value. Resident Evil 4 VR is about it for the Q2. I think there was a Batman game for the Q3. You’d have access to anything the Steam Frame has access to if you’re streaming from a PC.
I think the PSVR2 works as well, but it’s wired only.
Half Life Alyx is certainly worth a blast through.
Stories like Ftumch’s reply, and the fact that it’s owned by Meta 🤮 have deterred me from wanting to try that one.
I really want to love VR, but it’s just not for me. And i don’t think i’m alone with that. To me, VR is something you try in a mall for 20min and think it’s cool and not something you want to play around with home.
There’s a reason we don’t see any big Let’s Players do more than a couple episodes of VR games.
That doesn’t mean they’re not having fun, but it’s quite physically demanding and the experience just doesn’t translate to 2D.
I love Half life alyx. I played maybe half an hour, and i don’t think i’ll ever play more. Just the thought of putting the vr headset back on puts me off. I thought VR would be great for me, because i do a lot of sports anyway and i like to move around. But sweating while playing video games isn’t as fun as it seems. Especially when you sweat a lot in and around the goggles. Like i said, it’s an experience, not really more. On a side note, i also learned i’m a huuuge pussy when it comes to VR games. I really don’t know what it is, i was never scared of a movie or video game or anything really. In vr looking into a dark hole where something might jump scare me, really isn’t for me at all.
Looks can be deceiving. Coming from someone who uses the steamdeck, that layout looks exactly how I hoped and imagined it would be. The steamdeck is incredibly comfortable to hold and this looks like it would be the same!
It definitely reminds me of that Steam controller someone on Youtube built by sawing a Steamdeck in two and gluing the ends together so to speak. They said it‘s their dream controller so I‘m sure this controller already has some fans. I just can‘t tell by looking at it.
The first controller looked the same, but was very good to use once you got used to it. The build quality, though, was…fucking terrible.
I had to fix my controllers so many times that in the end I was swapping them out almost weekly. Still, felt great in the hand.
I have the first controller, just dug it out the other day because I thought I was going to be able to use it on my new tablet, it still sucks. I never could get used to it, but it’s a far sight better looking then this thing.
It might be you just got unlucky. Mine is still going strong all this years, and I use it often.
It’s basically steam deck minus the screen. If you are used to the steam deck it’ll be fine.
