Valve delays Steam Deck, now starts shipping February 2022

Steam for Linux still has some basic syntax and command line issues when launching stuff. Gamescope for example is very picky about where exactly arguments and commands are placed.

A shame, but I suppose that's true about more time to work on Proton. I wasn't expecting mine until like June anyway, so what's another two months at this point?

omg, they will miss the christmas! this is a HUGE deal, most of the sales happen in christmas!
source:
https://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_date.php

i hope not many people cancel their pre order because they were planing to give it to someone else as christmas present, and cant anymore!

People who managed to get december date probably didn't buy it by accident and to cancel it afterwards. If they cancel it because of that then I say more and sooner for the rest of us down the line.

fair enough, i just think we cant afford to lose sales, its the do it or die moment for linux gaming.

on the other hand, the less people who nuke steamOS from it to install windows because an certain game didnt worked, the better.
i think they delayed because they realized proton was not ready for the prime time, it still need more games , hopefully they wont delay it again and this will have more positive side effects than negative.

I really wouldn't worry about cancelled orders, if those happen they won't make a dent. There is so much more people at the end of the queue. It shouldn't matter if this product is suppose to be even remotely successful. If few people canceling would be an issue then the whole Deck has bigger problems already. Once it's out and the reviews are favorable (as the teasers and generally reports from people who had the chance to try one) suggest, people will start ordering them more freely.

im using the console market as reference, i know its "an pc" but at the same time, it will be competing with the likes of switch for the consumers pocket.
in the console market, any big mistake that companies do, can kill the product if the companies dont act fast.
its a matter of set things in motion and keep acelerating fast.
an console who is smaller but growing faster may attract more developers than other who already have more sales depending on the difference of numbers.

i know a lot of things are different in that case, i just dont lik e the idea of having to wait another 5 years for valve to try again.

Valve is pretty clearly delaying this so they can finish Half-Life 3 as a Deck-only game.

They can blame the IC shortage, but PROTON is not ready and a lot of big games won't run.

My bet is on this as well.

I'm not surprised. Hopefully they can use the extra time to work more on Proton, as well as SteamOS 3.0.

It wouldn't surprise me if the chip shortage is to blame for it being delayed, I'm guessing it's going to be about as difficult to find as graphics cards are right now because of that

A couple extra months could make a significant difference.

It does mean that 5.16 (with lots of handy dandy stuff for Van Gogh and the Deck) will be out before it launches, rather than probably out before it launches. So that's probably made someone a lot more relaxed.

Valve already have Kernel developers in house + they sponsor Collabra to help with kernel development + they are customers of AMD which also has kenrel developers. So Valve is perfectly capable of applying their own patches where some of them are slated for 5.16 to go upstream, if 5.16 wasn't released before the release of SteamDeck. Even when 5.16 releases, they might add additional patches them selves anyway, because I understand that the first futex2 patch which is slated for 5.16 does not do everything Valve and Collabra wanted to do. And the Kerel community asked them to submit smaller patches and get them accepted individually.

Looking forward to these patches hitting upstream anyways. Maybe I will try to wrestle my self away from kernel 5.4 on my gaming computer, or I could just add the futex2 patch my self to 5.4, but I want to stop having to add patches I want to the kernel and use a binary update instead of updating compiling source. Its just I also use some patches to the Nvidia driver which requires an older nvidia driver which requires an older kenrel. shrugs

It wouldn't surprise me if the chip shortage is to blame for it being delayed, I'm guessing it's going to be about as difficult to find as graphics cards are right now because of that

It is the sole purpose of it. They mention it on the email sent to people that pre-ordered it. The shortage is affecting other big companies too, e.g; Nintendo recently reduced their expectations to create/sale hardware on 2022 by 20%.

The irony in this story, is that the IT industry spends trillions of $/£/€ in resiliency, high availability, failover… you name it. Yet we rely on TSMC, as a single point of failure, for over 50% of chip manufacture.


Last edited by Arehandoro on 11 November 2021 at 11:27 am UTC

Valve is pretty clearly delaying this so they can finish Half-Life 3 as a Deck-only game.

I wouldn't mind that (in fact, I think it would be good for the Deck and for Linux in general), but only as long as it's just a timed exclusive which will eventually find its way to other platforms and also other stores (not just Steam).

While I obviously said that as a joke, it's not too far fetched for them to release a game that's highly specific to Deck's controls to the point that it wouldn't be really playable on desktop. They did that for VR after all, didn't they?

Of course, we _hope_ we aren't forced into Deck to play HL3, but you never know what a company's plans are.

Won't buy it at launch anyway, I'm waiting for some reviews.

For the first time in the history of the Internet, people everywhere are forced to develop patience after the supply dead-lock monkey-wrench. A year or two ago the rage would be at a all time high and now I just read comment & comment about solidarity.

I wonder if it will now ship on Two's-day (Tuesday 22/2/2022)

Ha, following the Dreamcast's 9/9/99?

Valve is pretty clearly delaying this so they can finish Half-Life 3 as a Deck-only game.

I wouldn't mind that (in fact, I think it would be good for the Deck and for Linux in general), but only as long as it's just a timed exclusive which will eventually find its way to other platforms and also other stores (not just Steam).

While I obviously said that as a joke, it's not too far fetched for them to release a game that's highly specific to Deck's controls to the point that it wouldn't be really playable on desktop. They did that for VR after all, didn't they?

I was trying to think how that would work considering it's much more similar to existing controls than VR controls are, but I guess the Deck does have

• Gyroscope,


• Touch screen,


• More buttons on the back than most controllers,

so I suppose if someone really wanted to they could make a game that only really works on a Deck.

Valve is pretty clearly delaying this so they can finish Half-Life 3 as a Deck-only game.

I wouldn't mind that (in fact, I think it would be good for the Deck and for Linux in general), but only as long as it's just a timed exclusive which will eventually find its way to other platforms and also other stores (not just Steam).

While I obviously said that as a joke, it's not too far fetched for them to release a game that's highly specific to Deck's controls to the point that it wouldn't be really playable on desktop. They did that for VR after all, didn't they?

I was trying to think how that would work considering it's much more similar to existing controls than VR controls are, but I guess the Deck does have

• Gyroscope,


• Touch screen,


• More buttons on the back than most controllers,

so I suppose if someone really wanted to they could make a game that only really works on a Deck.

The deck is probably closer to Steam Controllers (as far as configurability) than your standard xbox 360 layout style controller.
In fact, I want to say with the exception of a second analog stick, and I think 4 instead of two buttons on the bottom, the control capabilities are identical. Oh yeah, and the touch screen, I suppose. But hopefully outside of say RTS games, not many will use the touch screen, as that's how I think mobile games are terrible...

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