How Valve Made $600,000,000 in a Year | Steam Deck Success Story
How Valve Made $600,000,000 in a Year | Steam Deck Success Story
105 comments
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They deserve it just for their contributions to Proton/WINE/Linux. The Steam Deck might be my favorite console ever but I’m even more excited about the future and what Valve’s efforts will enable. One of the things that’s great about open source is that someone somewhere might build something on top of your work that you never expected. In 5 or 10 years, I would not be shocked if the work they’ve done on Proton ends up way bigger than games.
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Seems pretty easy.
Step 1: direct the largest library/store of games ever
Step 2: create the best piece of gaming hardware ever
Step 3: dribble out pre-orders for a year to really get that slow hype train rolling
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The only problem with this plan is that Valve have massive issues when it comes to counting to 3.
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Confirmed?
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If that's their biggest flaw, I'll take it every day.
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I wouldn't call the steam deck the greatest piece of gaming hardware ever. There are many very well equipped PC handhelds out now. The difference that Valve brings is that their software is impeccable and they have a good history of supporting their hardware with up to date software for many, many years.
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While there is better hardware out there now I can guarantee you that the software sucks on all of them in comparison to the steam deck. And if you run HoloISO on them you won't get the full feature suite.
Plus of course the price point. You can get a refurbished SteamDeck for like 330€ now. While alternatives start at like at least twice that for almost the same performance.
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Competitors have better performance, but the overall hardware of Steam Deck is unmatched so far. Trackpads alone make it so much more flexible.
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I mean ya can't really evaluate the hardware and ignore the software. The hardware won't do anything without it.
Additionally Valve was the first to my knowledge to incorporate actually comfortable hand grips (at the expense of size), gyros, and trackpads.
Any handheld that's not just a basic emulator is totally nullified by their garbage software (in my opinion).
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According to the logic of this video it costs Valve $0 to produce steam decks. Jeez, the Internet is so filled up with these unresearched, amateurish attempts at journalism.
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Yeah, title is clickbait. In reality it would be nigh-inpossible to calculate how much money it has made them.
Not only because Valve is a private company but because they mostly make money on games and it's impossible to say which games were sold because Steam Deck exists, though you could probably get a pretty close estimate based on playtime % on Steam Deck vs. other hardware, users who ONLY register a Steam Deck, and other such data. But again, because they're a private company we don't have access to most of that data.
Likely they are breaking even or even taking a small loss on the actual hardware, but I'm sure they have achieved the intended goal of increased game sales well into the millions.
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Interesting, I assumed that it would flop or at best be a very niche product. It doesn't seem like a very interesting device to me. I don't see the appeal at all.
I guess it's nice to hear that it's so successful, considering how much it has done for linux gaming.
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Tell me you haven't tried a steam deck without telling me you haven't tried a steam deck.
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Not the person you replied to, but I have a Steam Controller and a streaming device for my main library on my desktop, so I'm honestly torn.
What do you think makes this better than such a setup? From my perspective, it seems like the main benefit is "Steam Controller with screen attached," so it's portable, and it has some limited* capabilities to install and play games locally.
I'm not trying to detract, but having used my own setup for over five years, I wonder what it is I might be missing. What do you think?
Edit: *Compared to a desktop with latest-gen or second-latest-gen hardware.
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It's a handheld that can play basically any game through the previous generation and even some current AAA titles. If you have a steam library already, most of your games are suddenly playable on the go. The hardware is open with spare parts easily obtainable so that you can repair it yourself if you drop it. Valve is very engaged with maintaining and updating the software to be an enjoyable experience whether you prefer console or PC. Because it is subsidized by software sales the hardware costs less and drove down prices in the industry for competing products. When my 10-year-old motherboard gave out in my desktop, I was able to use the Steam Deck as my primary PC for a month while I took my time putting together a new computer. Also, you are very correct that it has had a meaningful impact on Linux gaming.
In my opinion, there's a lot to like.
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I will also argue that the Steam Deck is driving more quality/fun games as the HW is not the highest spec. Some (bad) games relied only on the "prettyness" of the game to sell. Today those practices do not push many numbers... looking at you Forspoken.
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I get what you're saying. I thought that myself, that it would be niche. Then I got it and now it's part of my standard carry. I think the tricky thing about it is that it doesn't do anything surprising, so you wouldn't expect that it would be so successful. But once you try it yourself, you realize that the appeal is primarily in how balanced and versatile it is. In other words, it doesn't do anything new, but it does everything that it tries to do very well
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I have two for my kids, and will be getting a third. With the dock, it acts as a regular desktop computer with monitor on an arm, mouse, keyboard, etc, giving my kids an inexpensive desktop computer that can play games. It's emulation is so robust that I downloaded battle net from Blizzard, added the installer as a non steam game, ran it with proton compatibility, and they can now play diablo 2 resurrected.
In desktop mode it is just a regular Linux desktop, so they can browse the web, and I have a nuc running Windows that they can remote into to learn Windows OS stuff as well. It is a way better experience for them than any other micro PC you might find for $400. And it can be mobile. Pretty crazy device.
That said, I wouldn't need one for myself unless I traveled a whole lot more and wanted my steam fix on the road. But for a kids first desktop they are amazing.
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You can throw it in your backpack and go around the city on roller blades screaming "hack the planet" because you've literally got a fully functional PC in your back pocket.
It's solid. when my laptop went out and I needed a back up, it serves as a daily driver for a few days while the replacement shipped. No issues.
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This was one of those products that, when it was announced, I thought to myself “meh, I have no need for this.” But through the urging of friends, I pre ordered it back in July of 21, because hey, it was only 5 bucks to deposit and I could cancel.
Then as they started coming out, and I heard about everything they could do, I thought “well damn that’s pretty cool.” And then my own hype grew until I managed to get it, I believe August of last year. By far the most fun I’ve had with a device in quite some time.
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Yep.
It's also interesting to think of it as a "device" because it blurs the line between PC and handheld so well.
Half the time I'm thinking of it as a device. The other half of the time I'm thinking of it like a laptop or a PC.
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i don't get this, it's a handheld PC that can play games really well, in what universe would that not sell well?
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what's the battery life of these beasts?
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Depends on your game, settings, screen brightness, etc. It's highly tunable with stuff like FPS limiters and even custom TDP limit settings built into the UI. Just running a Gameboy Color emulator, for instance, you might get 6+ hours. Running Baldur's Gate 3 at reasonably optimized settings from an online guide, you'd get about 1.5-2 hours
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That's almost impossible to answer because it all depends on how you're using it, what games you're playing, screen brightness, etc.
But in general I would say it's pretty good.
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You can literally make a steam deck last 30 mins at minimum. Lol. I would say most users are getting 2 to 3 hours with reasonable settings. So many variables at play. Your best bet is to go in with realistic expectations.
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Somewhere between 2 and 8 hours.
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Whenever someone talks about Steam Deck, I feel like I am in an alternate universe from my original one, because for some reason, I remember Steam Deck as a failed product attempt no one cares about lol, and now it is a big money maker, so yikes, in what universe am I now? Lmao
105 comments
The SteamDeck is my favorite purchase of last year.
Literally the best PC I've ever owned.
Yep, at the end of the day it’s so much nicer to lay in bed to play vs. sit at my PC desk. I play so much more of my backlog now.
Do you use it hand held? I ask because I've had a Switch for years and I've used it hand held like three times. I'm interested in how the Steam Deck performs 'docked'.
Works exactly like you’d expect. Plug it in and keep playing. I use a ps5 controller, no issues. No performance changes as nothing is throttled when you play it in handheld mode
It's great docked, except for an audio bug in Linux that causes some occasional minor (but annoying and concentration-breaking) static sounds while outputting over HDMI. It comes and goes on its own.
The bug is acknowledged by Valve, and it's (to the best of my understanding) not something specific to the Steam Deck. Supposedly it's being worked on, but no fix yet.
Once fixed, the Deck will be nearly perfect in my eyes.
I don't have a switch but I only use my deck handheld. It works great IMO.
Yeah, more horsepower can't beat being able to play from an airplane!
It's the perfect balance, I used to love my switch but this is a lot better while retaining 90% of the portability. And the key thing - it's not better only in terms of performance (graphics), but in terms of compatibility: it will take most of the games available on switch, either natively as pc versions or through emulation. But also a truly vast array that goes from Sega's sonic adventure to cyberpunk2077 or Starfield. It's awesome.