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Valve has announced today that their hotly anticipated handheld, the Steam Deck, has been delayed until 2022.

Sadly, every company making computing hardware has been facing component shortages and various shipping delays and it seems that Valve has been unable to get around it. They said "The launch of Steam Deck will be delayed by two months. We’re sorry about this—we did our best to work around the global supply chain issues, but due to material shortages, components aren’t reaching our manufacturing facilities in time for us to meet our initial launch dates.".

So now, instead of December 2021 the first set of order invitations will go out to customers in February 2022. That is the new starting point, with everyone being shifted (ours is now saying Q2 2022).

Valve apologised and mentioned they will "continue working to improve reservation dates based on the new timeline, and will keep folks updated as we go".

While it's a huge shame, there is a positive side to this. A delay gives Valve plenty more time to get Steam Play Proton into a state where it can run even more games, and run them with good performance too. It's been a struggle for some multiplayer games with the various anti-cheat systems, even with the recent announcements for Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye, not many developers are willing to confirm their support for it just yet.

As before you can visit the Steam Deck page to see when yours will hopefully be available.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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36 comments
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TheRiddick Nov 11, 2021
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.
Philadelphus Nov 11, 2021
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?
elmapul Nov 11, 2021
Quoting: Solitary
Quoting: elmapul
Quoting: Solitary
Quoting: elmapulomg, 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.
ShabbyX Nov 11, 2021
Valve is pretty clearly delaying this so they can finish Half-Life 3 as a Deck-only game.
sub Nov 11, 2021
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoThey 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.
CyborgZeta Nov 11, 2021
I'm not surprised. Hopefully they can use the extra time to work more on Proton, as well as SteamOS 3.0.
LiamMcBride Nov 11, 2021
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
ziggurat Nov 11, 2021
Quoting: CatKiller
Quoting: Purple Library GuyA 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
Arehandoro Nov 11, 2021
Quoting: LiamMcBrideIt 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
ShabbyX Nov 11, 2021
Quoting: Hori
Quoting: ShabbyXValve 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.
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