The Steam Deck is Incomplete - SteamOS Software Review

We finally get to talk about the software experience of Valve's soon-to-be-released Steam Deck, and uhh, it's unfinished... but that doesn't mean you shouldn't buy one. Here's why.

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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
2:18 Login & home experience
3:12 The Steam button, navigation, and growing pains
3:35 The store experience & finding compatible games
7:01 Library & download speeds
7:40 Game compatibility experience
8:10 Steam Deck vs. Windows equivalents
9:40 The quick access menu
10:54 Valve is making other console makers look bad: an Xbox story
12:42 Offline mode and dynamic cloud saves... ish
13:57 Things that still need fixing
14:37 The elephant in the room: incompatible games
15:41 A temporary fix for game incompatibility
16:03 Valve agrees that it's unfinished
16:41 Linus is switching to the Deck

[OhBoyItsFrancis]

"Elf Wives Cheat to Ride my Meat" will be a landmark launch title for the Steam Deck, calling it

[DoubleAgent]

Faults aside, I’m super impressed with this thing and Valve as a company. The level of transparency is exactly what I want and what I feel consumers deserve.

[zbjnflv]

Hopefully, this will increase overall game compatibility with Linux

[TylerMyGuyler]

Gaben said it himself. They're taking a big risk with this and are selling them at a relatively cheap price. They need this to work. And it looks very promising.

[noodeln]

most issues mentioned has to do with software and not hardware, so i’m sure they’ll smooth out any issues along the way

[randoml]

Valve understands that "the more options we give people the more happy customers we will have" and that's really cool

[BunkerSquirrel]

For a “software company” it’s kinda funny they made such polished hardware with a fairly buggy software front end.
That being said, projects like Proton are straight up magical.

[EnkiW.R]

It seems Valve made a right move.
It applied the java's strategy: "buy once, play everywhere". Now you don't have to wonder whether to buy PC version or console version of the game you like.
Valve finally created an ecosystem that filled the gap between PC and console.

[Notllamalord]

It’s sad that we get treated so badly by console companies that some basic transparency and pro-user features blow our minds

[ramunettv]

I feel that this OS is gonna get smoothed over really well, since it's Steam and this is one of there biggest projects that they want to keep alive.

[ycyean]

You know Linus is a dedicated person

when instead of being lousy about his worker calling him at night
he literally helped him and gave feedback

[JazzOLantern]

Valve is one of the last companies that actually works with their community, that’s why I will always support them. I can trust that they will get these things fixed.

[itsciwi]

For a video about how it's incomplete, I think you've sold me on it!
I had the intention of maybe picking one up in a year, when it's a bit more mature. But I genuinely believe in voting with my wallet and this kind of industry disruption and customer-freedom-focused design approach is something I want to see more of.

[ClanTeamKillr]

11:47 You know what would be really cool, if there was a steam deck optimized setting for the games that run on it, similar to the NVidia optimized setting in GeForce experience, and you could apply it through the setting in steam.

[darvishhussain]

Valve owning up and being ready to address the issue is the best thing that could happen from a console/game developer. Respect.👍

[iurigrang]

I really think you should revisit the steam deck now that it's officially out with no queue. Apparently, many of the kinks, but not all, have been ironed out, it would be interesting to see how it fares nowadays.

[OfficialMaxBox]

"except for Fez, which I had some crashing issues with" giving me flashbacks to the indie game documentary

[Clockdistrict]

Considering most issues are software, rather than hardware, I'm really impressed from what I've seen. It's also a brand new product, this can only get better as time goes on. Valve once again killing it with new hardware releases!

[TrowGundam]

The Heroic Game Launcher is AWESOME. It started for Epic Games Store, but recently added GoG support. You can sign into your accounts for each store and it'll download games and run them through various versions of WINE and even Proton. They also added the ability to navigate with controller a couple updates ago, specifically for the SteamDeck. Definitely check that out.

[DrathVader]

What excites me about this is that any work Valve puts into game compatibility on Steam Deck will translate into game compatibility on Linux in general.