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Reflecting on the Steam Deck

A year ago, I wrote about my new Steam Deck. So, after a year - has it been worth it?

Overall impressions

The Steam Deck is a great device. I’m still impressed how well it works. Both hardware and software are very polished. I’m still amazed how well all those Windows games work on Linux.

The Steam Deck handles suspend/resume very well. I can put it to sleep and start playing again, without any issues. This is a huge plus for me, as I can play a couple of minutes here and there, without having to worry about saving my progress.

The Steam Deck also handles software updates very well. I wish every system would update so seamlessly.

Not all games are equal

I didn’t have a single technical issue with any game I played, but some games have arbitrary restrictions that make them less fun or outright unplayable on the Steam Deck. I have no idea whether this is caused by politics, company greed or just plain incompetence - I also don’t care. Steam Deck taught me that there are a lot of great and fun games out there, and I don’t need to waste my time and money on fighting the idiosyncracies of triple-A game developers.

Ubisoft

I fully blame the game developers for this, not Valve. I’m specifically looking at you, Ubisoft.

I don’t really get why I need to install a pointless launcher like Uplay, when I just want to play a game. I dislike this on PC, but the launcher is such a broken mess that it basically prevents me from playing their games on the Steam Deck. You need to login with your Ubisoft account every single time you start the game. Following best practices and using a strong random password makes this a playing prevention system.

Funny thing is, games like Assassin’s Creed work perfectly fine once you get them started - it’s just no fun at all to start them.

For now, I just consider Ubisoft a hostile game developer and avoid their games. While the new Assassins Creed looks interesting, there are developers out there that don’t treat their customers like this and deserve my money more.

Online Mode

I recently started playing Hitman III. I’m a huge fan of the Hitman series, but I really can’t recommend this game on the Steam Deck. The game itself works just fine, but the pointless distinction between “online” and “offline” mode is a big source for frustration when playing on a device that’s not always connected to the internet.

Linux on the Desktop

The Steam Deck showed me that running games is no longer a reason to run Windows. There have only been a couple of things that made me use Windows on my Desktop:

  • Games
  • Adobe Lightroom
  • ETS for KNX

Given that games now run so smoothly on Linux, I have now switched to Linux on my Desktop as well. I’m giving Darktable another try for photo editing. I don’t need to update my KNX installation that often, so doing this from a VM is fine for me.

Conclusion

So, was it worth it? Absolutely.