Steam Deck

The Steam Deck, released by Valve in early 2022, answered a question PC gamers had asked for years: why couldn't the sprawling, powerful world of PC gaming fit in your hands the way a console handheld did? It looked like an oversized portable console, a wide slab with a screen flanked by sticks, buttons, trackpads, and grips, but inside it was a genuine gaming PC built on a custom AMD chip, capable of running demanding modern games untethered from a desk.

What made it work was software. Rather than fight Windows, Valve built the Deck on a Linux-based SteamOS and leaned on its Proton compatibility technology to run the enormous existing Steam catalog, most of which was written for Windows, without developers needing to do anything special. Valve added a verification system to tell players at a glance which games ran well, and the result was a handheld that could play a library many owners had already spent years and thousands of dollars building. It was also, characteristically for Valve, an open device: users could install other storefronts, run a full desktop, or replace the operating system entirely.

Commercially and culturally, the Deck landed hard. It sold in the millions, was frequently supply-constrained at launch, and spawned a wave of imitators as other manufacturers rushed out Windows-based handheld PCs to chase the category Valve had reinvigorated. Just as importantly, it dragged Linux gaming into the mainstream almost invisibly, since most buyers simply saw a machine that played their games and never thought about the operating system underneath. That surge of real-world users pushed developers and Valve alike to improve Linux compatibility across the board.

The Steam Deck's legacy is still being written, but it has already reshaped its era: it legitimized the handheld gaming PC, validated a decade of Valve's investment in Linux, and gave players a portable window onto the deepest game library in the industry.