Has the Steam Deck stayed part of your gaming life?

My Steam Deck...

  • Total voters
    135
t1337duder said:
Emulation does feel like the strong point. I find myself playing Gameboy and GBA titles more than anything. Just a vast library of great titles that were really designed for handheld gaming. Just beat Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow a couple of days ago and I doubt I would've ever bothered to play it if not for trying to make use out of the Steam Deck. EmuDeck has made it extremely easy to set everything up where emulation feels perfectly integrated with the Deck. And when you have the Steam Deck often outperforming the Switch at their own games, it seems like there's a lot of potential value and the device's limitations are what you make of it.
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Yeah, agreed emulation has been great on the Deck (especially how easy it is to do with EmuDeck). I tried a bit of Switch emulation and didn't like the initial caching or performance, I'm curious how more powerful handheld hardware handles Switch emulation (ie: Ally).

I really hope Valve hurries it up with a Steam OS 3.5 release, at this point, I'm ready to build a dedicated gaming box using Steam OS and think it would pair up nicely with my Steam Deck. I'm thinking they might actually be able to pull off the whole 'Steam Machines' initiative if they do.
 
I don't use mine much anymore. I was pretty hyped for it for the first month but the combination of 20-45 fps at low/med settings in modern games, itty bitty text, and the vastly better comfort, controls, and ease of use of doing things other than or in addition to gaming has pushed me back to the PC.
 
I hardly used mine. Gave it to my brother, he doesn't even use it and said he's gonna sell it.

Honestly, the deck itself isn't bad and steamOS is good. But lots of my games only work on windows.

I did try installing windows and it does work, but steamOS has way better optimizations for the deck and windows just feels weird on it. The ROG Ally seems interesting but if I didn't really like Windows on the deck idk how I'd like the ROG Ally.

I also have a bunch of gaming laptops so that probably didn't help.
 
I use it more now that I can do Xbox Game Pass cloud gaming on it.
 
Bankie said:
I don't use mine much anymore. I was pretty hyped for it for the first month but the combination of 20-45 fps at low/med settings in modern games, itty bitty text, and the vastly better comfort, controls, and ease of use of doing things other than or in addition to gaming has pushed me back to the PC.
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That's what kept me from getting one. Portable hardware just don't have the grunt I'd like to play games with the visual settings I want. No knock on Valve, you just can't do it with what you can get in a portable unit. So I don't imagine I'd end up using it much, Id just go to my desktop or get me laptop.
 
Sycraft said:
That's what kept me from getting one. Portable hardware just don't have the grunt I'd like to play games with the visual settings I want. No knock on Valve, you just can't do it with what you can get in a portable unit. So I don't imagine I'd end up using it much, Id just go to my desktop or get me laptop.
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IMO deck is not a replacement for a gaming desktop as you have mentioned. No portable device will ever be. Honestly when I come home from work after being on a computer for 8-10 hours I pull out the deck to unwind a bit with the family. Diablo 4 works wonders, Emulation(Switch is my main emulation choice atm) and other indie titles. Also for someone like my wife who cares less about graphics and just want to play games, it can play many older AAA titles perfectly fine :)
 
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I docked it to the TV yesterday and paired a Xbox AND a PS5 controller to it to play It Takes Two with the daughter while I wait for the new PSU to get here. It did great (60fps most of the time) but Medium settings upscaled to 4k isn't very pretty.
 
Vengance_01 said:
IMO deck is not a replacement for a gaming desktop as you have mentioned. No portable device will ever be. Honestly when I come home from work after being on a computer for 8-10 hours I pull out the desk to unwind a bit with the family. Diablo 4 works wonders, Emulation(Switch is my main emulation choice atm) and other indie titles. Also for someone like my wife who cares less about graphics and just want to play games, it can play many older AAA titles perfectly fine :)
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Ya I just don't see where I'd use that. If I wanna play games at home and not on a computer monitor, I send my computer's display to the TV and play on the couch with a controller. I don't know where I'd use it around the house. It would be convenient on the road, as opposed to a laptop, but I just love me the shiny graphics (and don't travel a whole lot anyhow).
 
its a very cool..." look what i bought, just like my steam link and stream controller." An expensive little piece of history lmfao
 
As a boring working/parent adult. The steam deck has forced me to learn more about Linux and Emulators. It has also gotten me back into gaming more than I have been in years. Before that the Switch got me here and there but in small doses only. Love the deck, a true game changer for me. I almost never use my ps5, gaming pc, or gaming laptop. Some days I do wonder if I should jump over the the ROG Ally gang.
 
MrSneis said:
As a boring working/parent adult. The steam deck has forced me to learn more about Linux and Emulators. It has also gotten me back into gaming more than I have been in years. Before that the Switch got me here and there but in small doses only. Love the deck, a true game changer for me. I almost never use my ps5, gaming pc, or gaming laptop. Some days I do wonder if I should jump over the the ROG Ally gang.
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IMO it's not that far of a jump ATM. wait for bios tuning and maybe a hardware revision to fix SD-card issues.
 
I use my Steam Deck all the time, I pretty much carry it around the house with me and have chargers at my desk, main sitting room, and at my nightstand. The fact that I can put the games to sleep like a Switch and open them right back where they were is amazing, I generally play in short bursts, just a few minutes at a time, so being able to just wake the Steam Deck and be right where I left off is a fantastic function. Most recently I've played through Ninja Gaiden Sigma and Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 on it, but I probably have a solid 50/50 split playing games on the SD vs on my main PC
 
Vengance_01 said:
gonna set up my own cloud streaming setup using my own VMs, GPU and proxmox
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I haven't gotten that in depth. I just upgraded to symmetrical fiber at my house, so I should be able to do remote PS5 and Steam Link (I think).
 
kirbyrj said:
I haven't gotten that in depth. I just upgraded to symmetrical fiber at my house, so I should be able to do remote PS5 and Steam Link (I think).
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Should be doable for sure as long as your location has low enough latency back to your residential Fiber.
 
as an update I am switching out my Tesla P4 for an ax2000 RTX dual slot haft height card. This is now going into my server in the garage and I will pass this card to windows. will be testing steam remote link on this computer. also will be testing the combo of moonlight and sunshine. the card is like a 2060 RTX with slightly lower specs to fit the 75 watt pci-e power delivery. This will give me access to the latest drivers vs being stuck with hacked older drivers supporting Tesla P4 card.
 
I personally have issues with the ergonomics and the weight. Makes it harder for me to play longer sessions so most of the time Ill just play on my gaming pc.
 
MrSneis said:
As a boring working/parent adult. The steam deck has forced me to learn more about Linux and Emulators. It has also gotten me back into gaming more than I have been in years. Before that the Switch got me here and there but in small doses only. Love the deck, a true game changer for me. I almost never use my ps5, gaming pc, or gaming laptop. Some days I do wonder if I should jump over the the ROG Ally gang.
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This is pretty much me.. I even have a beefy 4090, and love some pretty graphics, but with young kids and being tired post work / playing with kids after work, best case is I get an hourish+- depending on the day, of dedicated desktop gaming time in the office after kids are in bed.. but the better half wants me in her presence too. I can now hang out in the living room or bed while we watch TV together and chip away at my endless steam library.

Now instead of wasting time and scrolling on my phone during downtime of kids activities, bath time, dinner time, etc I can pull out the deck and easily get some game time in; it's been pretty awesome for that. Emulation has been icing on the cake.
 
zrikz said:
This is pretty much me.. I even have a beefy 4090, and love some pretty graphics, but with young kids and being tired post work / playing with kids after work, best case is I get an hourish+- depending on the day, of dedicated desktop gaming time in the office after kids are in bed.. but the better half wants me in her presence too. I can now hang out in the living room or bed while we watch TV together and chip away at my endless steam library.

Now instead of wasting time and scrolling on my phone during downtime of kids activities, bath time, dinner time, etc I can pull out the deck and easily get some game time in; it's been pretty awesome for that. Emulation has been icing on the cake.
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Yup and this is why I replaced my Better Haft's laptop with a deck. She is really enjoying it. I bought for her 2 years ago and she never used it. This will Keep her off Social Media more. She even uses Desktop Mode for web research, email etc... with a simple dock, old 17 inch Dell monitor and wireless keyboard and mouse.
 
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I found my cache of gamecube rpz files and loaded them up onto the deck over the weekend, it runs them very well. It also runs most ps2 games pretty well that I have tested, and some PS3 games. it's nice to have an alternative to books when the wife is being slow.
 
Why are the only two positive options in this poll essentially "I use it constantly" and "It's mostly an expensive desk ornament"? This is a terrible discretization of possible usage intervals. Outside of people who travel often, not many people are going to be using theirs literally all the time. I purchased a Steam Deck with the return to work tide coming in. It was $520 for the 512 GB one during the sale a bit ago.

I use mine usually when going to bed (or TMI but IDGAF, the toilet) and sometimes in the office when nothing else is going on (although this is rare since finding a private room for that is difficult in an open office lol). I would say that's more or less "using it when applicable." I'm using it exactly for the times I bought it for, and for that it has been exactly what I wanted. I've been playing Persona 5 Royal on it recently, and it's absolutely excellent for this. I can put it on standby to stop, and resume it whenever I feel like it. I have multiple decent gaming computers, so it's not like I'm going to be sitting there playing on it all the time, that would be silly. For what I got it for, it does great. It's going to take a while, but whenever I finish Persona 5, I look forward to starting up another RPG/SRPG/whatever, because those are great types of games to play on it.

I got it over the ROG Ally because reviews said it has better quality controls and better performance at very low power usage caps (well and it was $200 cheaper on sale). And that has definitely been the case. Persona 5 runs at a 6 watt cap absolutely wonderfully, and I'm enjoying the four rear buttons and the general quality of the rest of it.
 
I just got the Steam Deck last week. But have been using it a lot. I bring it to work and use it during my downtime since I am an on-site AV Tech that sometimes has absolutely nothing to do as long as my PMs and tickets are done. So yea I'll probably get 2 hours a day out of it on work days. Which is nice because I get 2 hours 40 mins battery life out of the deck playing Elden Ring. I wish I bought it a few years ago.
 
I found that I used it a ton when I was on vacations this summer. At home though, not as much. I prefer to just game via Moonlight on my TV or on my PC directly.
 
MavericK said:
I found that I used it a ton when I was on vacations this summer. At home though, not as much. I prefer to just game via Moonlight on my TV or on my PC directly.
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The Deck really is a wonderful vacationing device. Was also extremely nice to have when I had to spend a few days at the hospital while my father going through a bypass. It's one of those things that it's so incredibly nice to have for certain circumstances that I don't care if I don't use it a bunch on a daily basis. Especially considering that the cost of the device isn't too high, I'd easily recommend it for those situations.
 
t1337duder said:
The Deck really is a wonderful vacationing device. Was also extremely nice to have when I had to spend a few days at the hospital while my father going through a bypass. It's one of those things that it's so incredibly nice to have for certain circumstances that I don't care if I don't use it a bunch on a daily basis. Especially considering that the cost of the device isn't too high, I'd easily recommend it for those situations.
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I'm probably going to end up docking it next to my main PC and just using it as a secondary Linux machine in the meantime.
 
Docked next to main rig 95% of time. Mainstay when I go camping, vacation, biz trips, etc. Has it's place for sure, but not day to day.
 
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