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Do you still use your Steam Deck much?

I was wondering how much you are using your Steam Deck? And did the games you play on it change since you bought it?

I find that I used it a lot when I first got it, but my usage has gone down in the mean time. That's mostly because I play games that are not a great fit for the Steam Deck (strategy, building, etc.) and I prefer to play those on my PC.

113 comments
  • I exclusively use it. For most games it works great, for some games it doesn’t, but that’s fine for me.

  • my steam deck is my main daily device. I use it for most stuff. I own consoles, but its just so much easier to use the deck cause I can keep everything in one place.

    steam, emulation, I even use it for youtube. docked to my TV.

  • Use it every day. Being able to suspend and resume so smoothly usually makes it preferable to my main PC even if both are available. There are only a couple games (mostly hard fps) that I prefer to play on the PC instead.

    • Suspend and resume are indeed fantastic. There is no wait time before you can game.

  • Daily and by that 2-3 hours a day.

    I bought it instead of that Portal for the PS5 so as to stream games from my PlayStation so the family could share the TV but I found I am now just buying games for it (the Deck) solely and not using the PS5 anymore.

  • I use mine pretty often. I mostly play retro and indie games. It's an amazing piece of kit.

    • It definitely is, and I really enjoyed it when I got it. But I do run into the limitations of the device. Those limitations are by design because I would like a bigger screen, but putting a 17" screen on a handheld doesn't make it a handheld anymore. So my usecase might not fit with the device anymore. I do use it sometimes to play sports or casual games. But that's about it.

  • Twice a week maybe three times in bed, when my hands hurt too much to play on normal controllers.

    Or my body hurts too much to play at my desk/chair.

    I hate my weak AF 38 year old Fibromyalgia body. 🥹

    Best thing is, I just stream my PC > Deck so technically utilizing my beefy 7950x 7900xtx system.

    WoW Classic Cataclysm is a dumpster fire....but at least I can enjoy it with ConsolePort. 🎮

  • I use it for "light" games (the 2D stuff, Balatro, Dicey Dungeons, Whisker Squadron Survivor) while sitting in bed. Honestly when I got it, I wasn't expecting to use it as much as I did.

  • I'm still somewhat new to the deck. It is a few months now and my usage went down, because it is not the shiny new toy anymore, but it secured a stable place in my game time. Also there are games which I play exclusively on the deck.

    My switch on the other hand has suffered a lot because of that. Only MH rise gets me to still use it.

  • I'm playing something every night before bed as my calm/reset time.

    Just finished up Yakuza: Like A Dragon - that ending hits hard. I'll probably go for something different next.

    I still use my gaming laptop - but mostly just for Last Epoch multiplayer/BG3. I don't like the controller experience for either game, and i have a better voice setup for multiplayer chat on my PC.

  • It was setup as a desktop PC for my kid, (official dock, 1080p display, kb+m) for the last year and a half. Bit of an experiment on my part here, because I was curious to know if it was really viable.

    The short answer is: yeah, kinda, but with big caveats.

    The long answer is:

    • It's alright to watch youtube, browse the web and such.
    • It's perfectly fine for creative tools (GIMP, OpenShot, Libreoffice, etc).
    • It's unsuited for games kids actually want to play (no Fortnite, no more Roblox as of this year, no Valorant, etc).
    • It's surprisingly unreliable. We have had frequent issues (once every two weeks or so), with peripherals suddenly stopping to work for no apparent reason, or the system being slowed waaaay down. Turning it off and on again worked most of the time, but that is not something I expected from a Linux-based machine.
  • I really wanted to get a steam deck when they first came out, but I decided not to bc I wasn't gaming much at the time. Then I got a SD OLED right when they came out, and I've been playing it pretty much every day since then. I love playing retro games and emulating on it since its OLED screen is amazing, and I also do Steam Remote Play to it from my gaming PC and Chiaki to remote play from my PS5. Like another poster said, the Steam Deck has also been a game changer for getting me playing older games from my backlog. It's perfect for playing games on the couch while watching TV or a movie as well.

  • Every evening for games that I can't be bothered to launch on my pc, the form factor is what makes me go back to it every time, so comfortable to play anywhere and not sit at my desk

  • I smuggle it to work and use it for DND in place of a laptop. It's also come in clutch when waiting for the car to get worked on.

  • Yes.

    I don’t have a desktop pc, so before I got my Steam Deck, I was using my laptop for pc gaming.

  • I'm using mine almost exclusively now. My PS4 is dying and I don't want a PS5 so I'm currently buying my favorite games from that system in steam. Occasionally I'll co-op game on the Xbox with my husband and I'll pick up my switch whenever I get the itch to play animal crossing. But truthfully my vision is getting worse as I get older so the steam deck has become my favorite. My only regret is not getting the version with bigger storage. I haven't tried streaming games from my PC yet but that's my only option right now for larger games like Forza.

    • I have the 512GB LCD model and recently put in a 1.5TB SD card and am loving being able to install bigger games. So far I haven't noticed any real lag vs it being installed on the internal SSD. That may be an option for you.

      When funds allow I will be upgrading my internal SSD to a 2TB, but, for now, the SD card works fine

  • Pretty much ever since getting mine a few weeks back, I've been absolutely loving it and using it fairly often when I can. So far the only problem I have with it isn't even an issue on Valve's end. It's literally just that the BeeMod for Portal 2 doesn't have a Linux port and I'm too lazy to set it up on my deck.

    Otherwise, definitely a purchase I don't regret. Especially since it's gotten me to continue my melee only save in New Vegas that I've been meaning to get back to.

  • I've been experiencing some right wrist pain from too much mousing (at work and while gaming). So I find myself playing on the Deck more than my desktop PC nowadays.

113 comments