Steam Deck
The Steam Deck is a handheld gaming computer produced by Valve Corporation, designed to run games available on its Steam storefront. Built upon the experiences gained from Valve's earlier ventures with Steam Machine and the Steam Controller, the Steam Deck integrates a custom AMD APU and SteamOS, a Linux-based operating system. The Steam Deck represents Valve's pivot towards a fully in-house hardware development approach, following the challenges faced with Steam Machines' reliance on OEMs and the requirement for native Linux game support.
Since its release in February 2022, the Steam Deck has garnered significant attention for its widespread adoption and versatility, including support for both native Linux games and those running through Proton, a compatibility layer for Windows games. Additionally, the Steam Deck features a desktop mode and allows users to install third-party Linux applications. The device has seen multiple revisions, including the introduction of OLED screen models in November 2023. Despite criticism regarding battery life, the Steam Deck has achieved notable commercial success, selling millions of units and influencing the market with its approach to portable gaming, and has spurred interest in similar handheld gaming computers.
History
Valve's Steam Machine series of gaming computers using Linux-based SteamOS was introduced in 2015, which worked their way into the conception of the Steam Deck. Valve quietly pulled back on it by April 2018, but stated they remained committed to providing some type of open-hardware platform. Steam Deck designer Scott Dalton said "there was always kind of this classic chicken and egg problem with the Steam Machine", as it required the adoption of Linux by both players and game developers to reach a critical interest in the machines to draw manufacturers in making them. The lack of Linux game availability during the lifetime of Steam Machines led Valve to invest development into Proton, a Linux compatibility layer to allow Windows–based games to be run on Linux without modification.Some of the early prototypes of Valve's Steam Controller, also released in 2015, included a small LCD screen within the middle of the controller which could be programmed as a second screen alongside the game that the user was playing. One idea from this prototype was to include the Steam Link, a device capable of streaming game content from a computer running Steam to a different monitor, here routing that output to the small LCD on the controller. This was later considered by Valve a very early concept behind the Steam Deck. Furthermore, their experience with trying to convince other manufacturers to produce Steam Machines led Valve to realize that it was better to develop all their hardware internally. Dalton said, "More and more it just became kind of clear, the more of this we are doing internally, the more we can kind of make a complete package." Rumors that Valve was working on a portable gaming unit had emerged in May 2021, based on updates made within the Steam code pointing towards a new "SteamPal" device, and comments made by Gabe Newell related to Valve developing games for consoles. Ars Technica had been able to confirm that new hardware was in development at Valve.
Valve revealed the Steam Deck on July 15, 2021. The Deck, existing in three different models based on internal storage options, was shipped starting in February 2022 in North America and Europe, with other regions to follow throughout the year. Valve's CEO, Gabe Newell, said of the Steam Deck's approach, "As a gamer, this is a product I've always wanted. And as a game developer, it's the mobile device I've always wanted for our partners." According to Newell, they wanted to be "very aggressive" on the release and pricing strategy as they considered the mobile market as their primary competitor for the Deck. However, their focus was on the unit's performance; Newell stated, "But the first thing was the performance and the experience, was the biggest and most fundamental constraint that was driving this." Newell recognized that the base pricing was somewhat lower than expected and "painful", but necessary to meet the expectation of gamers who would want the Deck. Newell continued that he believed this was a new product category of personal computer hardware that Valve and other computer manufacturers would continue to participate in if the Steam Deck proved successful, and thus it was necessary to keep the unit's price point reasonable to demonstrate viability. The openness of the system was also a key feature according to Newell, as that is a defining "superpower" of the personal computer space over typical console systems. Newell did not want to have any limitations on what the end user could do with the hardware, such as installing alternate non-Steam software on it.
As early as December 2022, Valve was pursuing improvements on the Steam Deck, including per-game "power profiles", and some other performance improvements, as well as evaluating a second generation Steam Deck. Valve was also considering bringing some of the Steam Deck technology into a new Steam Controller 2. Valve announced two new Deck models to be available for purchase in November 2023, both with OLED screens, extended battery capacity, and improved cooling features, among other hardware modifications to improve connectivity and efficiency; however, no changes were made to the Deck's overall performance. These models replace two of the existing models. Hardware designers for Valve stated that they would have wanted to include OLED screens for the original launch models, but at the time, OLED screens of sufficient size and quality did not yet exist on the market, and they would have had to delay release by 12 to 18 months if they went on that route. Alongside the announcement of the OLED models, Valve stated they are working towards a Steam Deck 2 with overall system improvements including the CPU and GPU chips, but these systems will likely not be ready for two to three years. System designer Lawrence Yang said they wanted to wait for a "generational leap" of CPUs with better computing power without significant power requirement increases before implementing a new version of the Steam Deck; this was reiterated by Valve's software engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais in discussing the newly-announced Steam Frame and second iteration of the Steam Machine and Steam Controller in November 2025, saying "We're not interested in getting to a point where it's 20 or 30 or even 50% more performance at the same battery life. We want something a little bit more demarcated than that. So we've been working back from silicon advancements and architectural improvements, and I think we have a pretty good idea of what the next version of Steam Deck is going to be, but right now there's no offerings in that landscape, in the SoC landscape, that we think would truly be a next-gen performance Steam Deck."
Hardware
LCD models
The original Steam Deck was launched in February 2022 and included a custom AMD APU based on their Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architectures, named Aerith, after the Final Fantasy VII character Aerith Gainsborough. The CPU runs a four-core/eight-thread unit and the GPU runs on eight compute units with a total estimated performance of 1.6 TFLOPS. Both the CPU and GPU use variable timing frequencies, with the CPU running between 2.4 and 3.5 GHz and the GPU between 1.0 and 1.6 GHz based on current processor needs. Valve stated that the CPU has comparable performance to Ryzen 3000 desktop computer processors and the GPU performance to the Radeon RX 6000 series. The Deck includes 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM in a quad-channel configuration, with a total bandwidth of 88 GB/s.The Deck's main unit is designed for handheld use. It includes a touchscreen LCD display with a 1280×800 pixel resolution with a fixed 60 Hz refresh rate; games are configured to use vertical synchronization where possible. The unit's input set features two thumbsticks, a directional pad, ABXY buttons, two shoulder buttons on each side of the unit, four additional buttons on the rear of the unit, as well as two trackpads under each thumbstick. The thumbsticks and trackpads use capacitive sensing, and the unit further includes a gyroscope to allow for more specialized controls on the handheld mode. The unit also includes haptic feedback.
The Deck supports Bluetooth connectivity for input devices, including common game controllers, and includes integrated WiFi network support to meet IEEE 802.11
The unit shipped in three models based on internal storage options. The base model includes a 64 GB eMMC internal storage unit, running over PCI Express 2.0 x1. A mid-tier model includes 256 GB of storage through an NVMe SSD device, while the high-end unit includes a 512 GB NVMe SSD storage unit, with the latter two both shipping with drives that run PCI Express 3.0 x4. All 3 SKUs use the same M.2 2230 interface for internal storage. Valve stated that the built-in storage is not meant to be replaceable by end-users, though can be replaced as necessary for repair. Additional storage space is available through a microSD card slot, which also supports microSDXC and microSDHC formats.
As Valve considered options for bringing a handheld device to market, they set a priority that the device had to be able to play nearly the entirety of the Steam game catalogue, and rejected possible hardware that moved away from the standard x86-based processing structure that would have been easier to implement in handheld form but would have limited what games would be available. Only through recent discussions with AMD and their current product lines was Valve able to identify a technical approach that would meet the goal of a handheld device capable of playing all Steam games without overtaxing the processor unit. The developers considered the Steam Deck to be future-proof. While the specifications are modest compared to high-end gaming computers, they felt that the performance was at a good place that would be acceptable for many years, while still looking at newer software improvements, such as the addition of AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution. Though they do not have any current designs for a successor, Valve stated that there would likely be future iterations of the hardware in years to come, but the company expects the timing of releases to depend on the current state of processor technology and handheld device limitations rather than a regular upgrade cycle.
Valve quietly discontinued the LCD models of the Steam Deck around December 19, 2025, with the Steam store page updated to reflect no further manufacturing was planned.