With the release of the new Steam Controller, the Steam Machine, and now the Steam Frame VR headset, this year has been chock-full of Valve hardware releases. So, what could possibly be next—the Steam Deck 2? To some extent, sure; Valve has been "hard at work" on its next handheld gaming PC pretty much since the original Steam Deck launched back in 2022. What's surprising, though, is that Valve claims the RAMpocalypse hasn't hugely affected its plans.

Despite the clear impact on the pricing of both the Steam Machine and the Steam Frame, Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais told IGN that the memory supply crisis has "not really" affected the company's plans for the Steam Deck successor. He added, "We've talked before about how we want to make sure there's a very delineated performance improvement for something like a future Steam Deck, and I think we're still looking at it in the same way."

"It's just a matter of looking at the current conditions and seeing how and when we can deliver something like that," Griffais says, "But from what we're working on, as far as the user experience goes and what the product that we're trying to build goes, it's very similar goals."

Valve has been saying as far back as 2023 that it was waiting for "a generational leap in performance" to justify a follow-up, so that part of the strategy has remained consistent. That the company isn't rushing to push out an overpriced Steam Deck successor is arguably no bad thing either, especially given that the price for the 1 TB version of the original Steam Deck has now ballooned to $949.

It's good to hear that the Deck 2 is still being worked on despite the ongoing memory shortage. The Steam Frame and Steam Machine were already announced and shown off essentially as finished products late last year, so those would be hard (but not impossible) to back out of. Although Valve has said it's working on a Steam Deck 2, it doesn't seem to be quite so close to release, and concerns that the company could bin the project are a bit more pertinent than with the other products.

Valve obviously won't attempt to squeeze the launch of the Steam Deck 2 into an already packed year, but the memory supply crisis has likely pushed the handheld's release further out too.

But just how far out could a Steam Deck 2 release be? Well, Valve itself does not see an imminent end to the supply crisis, though some major memory players predict things could improve around late 2027 or early 2028 thanks to a surge in Chinese capacity. Other predictions suggest we should only be so lucky, with both SK hynix's CEO and Phison's CEO saying demand could continue to outstrip supply until 2030.

In light of those circumstances, 'not really' feels a bit like an exercise in measured understatement to me. At any rate, here's hoping we're not waiting until 2030 for a Steam Deck successor.

Steam Frame, Valve's latest entry in the VR hardware market, will cost AU$1,609 in Australia for the 256 GB model with included VR controllers. For the 1 TB Steam Frame model with included VR controllers, the Aussie price is AU$1,969.

The price isn't super surprising: the entry level model costs the same as the entry level Steam Machine. There's also the not-insignificant problem of the ongoing memory crisis: Valve would have preferred to release it cheaper.

The memory crisis has also necessitated another hardware waitlist. Like the Steam Machine, you won't be able to simply buy a Steam Frame and receive one a few days later. Instead, there's a waitlist lottery running between now and September 18, 2026 at 3am AEST. If you join the list between that time you'll have a chance to receive a unit ASAP.

If you wait until after September 18, you'll join a normal non-randomized queue, meaning the longer you leave it the longer you'll wait. Jacob Ridley has the full details.

PC Gamer's hardware team has been testing Valve's newest piece of kit, with Jacob pinning an 80 / 100 to the device in his Steam Frame review. "It's admittedly a tough sell as an upgrade to a Quest 3, or as someone's first step into VR when other options are much cheaper, but the Steam Frame is the best all-round VR headset I've used to date," he wrote.

There was a time when VR was pretty much exclusive to the PC. I'm talking about when the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift were the pinnacle of technology, circa 2016. I have very fond memories of those two headsets, often borrowing them from friends and colleagues, then ferrying them around to various spots to evangelise the new and exciting world of VR; VR that was then entirely tethered to a gaming PC. Then came the Oculus Go, later the Oculus Quest, and all of a sudden, VR was mobile.

It took a while before standalone VR headsets really took off. It wasn't until the Quest 2, and later Quest 3/Quest 3S, that these headsets started to dominate the conversation around virtual reality. Nowadays, these three dominate the Steam Hardware Survey for August 2026, accounting for over 60% of headsets plugged into a PC by those surveyed. The Valve Index, which launched in 2019, remains in fourth place. Few new arrivals in PCVR get anywhere close: the Bigscreen Beyond has just 1.25% of the share, which is less than the original Vive.

Many are using standalone headsets to play VR games powered by their gaming PC, hence being registered on Valve's survey at all. So, in a sense, there's still so much to play for on PC.

"Some of the other mobile devices, like the Meta Quest, for example, are some of the most popular headsets on Steam," says Jeremy Selan, a software engineer at Valve who worked on the Steam Frame. "So there is a real draw with PCVR even today amongst the millions and millions of VR headsets out there, and that's, I believe, because there's a lot of unique VR content that can only be accessed with the capabilities and power of the PC and the experimentation that comes on it."

Yet it'd be fair to say that the market has shifted attention away from PCVR experiences. I've had a look around SteamDB at the number of VR games that are released on Steam every year, and it's not a positive trend.

The number of VR games on the platform reached peak around 2017, and since that time, it's either remained flat or dropped with each subsequent year. By SteamDB's figures, 2025 was the worst year for VR games on Steam for a decade. Just 481 VR games released on the platform, and you have to go back to 2015, prior to the launch of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, to see a lower figure. Compare that to the exponential increase of non-VR games released on Steam each year, and it looks like VR has struggled to maintain a foothold on the platform.

In 2017, VR games accounted for 15% of all game releases on Steam. In 2025, they accounted for just 2%.

In comparison, the Quest Store has only seen an increase in new releases each year since 2020. Though Quest Store DB doesn't note how many of those are actual games. From a quick glance, many appear to be learning or XR experiences.

I'm not turning my nose up at the games that have launched on Steam in the past year, especially as that's 481 more things to play with a VR headset on PC. Moreover, many of the best VR games on PC came out years ago, such as Half-Life: Alyx, and they're still as enjoyable as ever. We're not short of things to play, but we might end up that way if something doesn't change.

The ongoing tally for 2026 suggests there have been 270 new VR games on Steam so far. We're already three quarters of the way through the year, and at this rate, we're looking at yet another poor yield; potentially the lowest since PCVR began.

So, what might help reverse this trend? Valve hopes that its new hardware, the Steam Frame, might turn the tide for Steam's VR catalogue; or, at the very least, bridge the divide between PCVR and mobile VR for gamers and developers.

"We love the PCVR community," says Steam Frame hardware engineer Joy Lyons. "We've been making VR devices for decades now, and so we've been there since the beginning."

The Frame offers something new for Valve. The ability to stream games from a local gaming PC over a dedicated wireless connection and run games on its very own hardware, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip. This dual functionality is nothing new for virtual reality, but from my time testing the Steam Frame over the past few weeks, it's definitely at its best when playing PCVR games streamed wirelessly via the included adapter. In that sense, it feels more a PCVR headset with standalone functionality than the other way around.

Lyons explains the rationale behind Valve's approach with the Steam Frame:

"We think it's great for customers to have more access to different types of games," Lyons says. "And I think what we're seeing is a maturing of the platform with these sort of fundamental technology movements just to make the emulation layers work, for example. And we see this as a sort of a broadening and maturing of the market; sort of an opening of the tent to more potential customers, more potential gamers."

The Steam Frame uses Proton, FEX, and Lepton to support a wider array of games. We're pretty familiar with Proton from the Steam Deck and Steam Machine, offering a way to play games made for Windows on a Linux machine. FEX is the emulation layer that makes it possible to play games designed for x86 chips on Arm chips. Games that run well on the Steam Frame from both Proton and FEX will get a badge to say so via the Steam Frame Standalone Verified programme.

Lepton is a container for Android games using the APK file format, which will allow these to run on the Arm-powered, SteamOS-run Steam Frame. Android games are now arriving on Steam, too. This will, in turn, boost the number of newly-released VR games on Steam. It just may take some time for many of the Android games mostly made for Quest to arrive. A good way to bump the numbers for next year and beyond.

"We wanted to, with the emulation, be able to have access to more games in the VR space," Lyons says. "And so I think some people who have done PCVR maybe haven't had access to some of the APK type games and so we're growing the catalog on that side as well."

Now, you might argue that's not really expanding PCVR so much as injecting Steam with lots of mobile VR games. I guess you'd be right, you ol' stick in the mud, you. But Valve engineer Jeremy Selan also counts PCVR experiences among those that they hope to get a much-needed boost from the launch of the Steam Frame.

"This is designed for PCVR streaming and to do that really, really well," Selan says of the Steam Frame. "So we've been giving these units out to developers. Our hope is that this will help rekindle the excitement of what you can do with PCVR.

"Our hope is that out of the box, obviously, no work is needed," Selan continues. "Your existing catalog of VR titles on Steam will just work. But over time, as we sell more of these and the economics improve, we think this will give a new life to the ability to take advantage of the large compute of your PC while still having a great wireless VR experience."

"We love the PCVR community," Lyons says. "We always will. This is our heritage. These are our customers, and we see this as a great product for them. We made it for them. But we also want to grow a healthy ecosystem for both the gamers and the game developers."

I guess we'll have to check back in on the stats once the Frame has had a chance to shake things up. As Selan says in our chat, there are also some VR games that will always be tied to PC, like flight sims or racing sims, but those often feel pretty clunky in my experience. I can't even boot the latest F1 game in VR, let alone join a race. Nevertheless, I agree with Selan that more can be done with VR with a PC powering the experience.

Perhaps Valve should lead the way with its own first-party VR game, like it did Half-Life: Alyx. Of course, I asked Lyons and Selan about any plans for future release, but they told me Valve has "elected to pour all our efforts into making our partner games available," and "don't have any new titles coming out." Though, Half-Life: Alyx came out nearly a year after the Valve Index, so I'm holding out hope yet. Credulous? I don't know the meaning of the word.

The Steam Frame is here and it's one of the best VR headsets I've ever had attached to my face, just don't ask me about the price. But when we spoke to two of the people at Valve who helped create the device—Joy Lyons and Jeremy Selan—they told me the company actually had its new VR headsets ready years ago, but they made the tough decision to pull the plug on those designs.

"We had the headsets ready three, four years ago," Selan explains, "and they were big, bulky devices. They were more in the style of the Valve Index, and we put them on, and we're just like, this doesn't feel like what we would want the next round of our product to be."

We'd asked why now, why is this the right time to release a new VR headset? With sales dropping year over year and 2026 potentially being the worst year effectively since records began for PCVR releases, it doesn't necessarily seem like the perfect time to be putting out new virtual reality hardware, and that's before we even mention the memory and hardware pricing crisis.

"You asked, why now?" says Selan. "The answer with all Valve projects is 'as soon as we can'. Right, this was the soonest we could release the headset, but we had to make sure it was ready.

"The hardware engineers went back to the drawing board many, many times to finally achieve sort of the very small form factor, the comfortable, the lightweight. Figuring out all the system trade-offs with regards to power versus battery weight, versus cooling, and thermals. So this was absolutely the fastest we were capable of shipping the device that we were proud of.

"Now we thought that was going to be early 2026, and it turns out due to supply and component shortages and economics that in fact now was the soonest we could release it."

But it's not just about the hardware. As Valve engineer Joy Lyons notes, "The focus was on being lightweight and being comfortable", but while it's the hardware that makes that possible, all of the work Valve has been putting in with its previous releases on the software side have made this headset the one that actually gets released.

"We learned a lot with our portable systems," Lyons explains, "including the Steam Deck launch and all the work we did for emulation and the operating system, with Proton being able to run Windows-based games on Linux, on the SteamOS operating system.

"And so we've been continuing that work, and now we've got an ARM device, and so we think this is a great time to take advantage of Proton, being able to do FEX, which allows us to run x86 games on a piece of ARM hardware, and Lepton, which is the new work to do Android-based games, and have that work also on our SteamOS platform. And so we're able to have all these come together, as well as all of our work on the hardware side."

It's this kind of VR nexus point which has made the Steam Frame the right device for Valve, and at the right time. It is, of course, a PC VR device, with its almost uncanny ability to stream games wirelessly from your PC utterly seamlessly, but it is also a standalone device able to translate your x86 PC's Steam library and have that run inside an ARM-based VR headset. Again, almost seamlessly.

And then you also now have the ability to play Android games through Steam via the Lepton translation layer. Now, that's not just Candy Crush writ large on a massive virtual screen, this is specifically designed to capture the wealth of VR content released for the Meta Quest and its Android-based Horizon OS. And with this new world of potential content available to the Steam Frame as a portable device, it's been a bit of a journey of discovery even for Valve.

"I'm like, 'I wonder if this one will run?'" says Lyons. "And you download it, and you open it, and it runs, and you put it on the huge screen. That was the moment where it's just like, 'this is fun. I'm gonna take off my engineer hat. I'm gonna stop nitpicking every little thing that I know about the device, and I'll definitely address that tomorrow. But right now, I'm actually having fun.'

"I think I went through 89 games in a two week period… that's kind of the moment where it's like, 'yeah, this is great'."

"We're our own best testers," adds Selan. "So I do remember in those days I would have access to this secret prototype VR hardware, and I would take it home… and I'd still use my Steam Deck.

"And there became a transition point with this round of hardware, where when I took this home and this was my favorite device to use. And so, for me personally, that's when sort of a switch flipped in my head, and I was like, 'This is going to be a real thing'."

After many years of waiting and a few false starts over on Reddit, the Steam Frame is finally here. We even have a price for the virtual reality headset, which is set to ship imminently to customers. Hold onto your headsets…

• Steam Frame (256 GB) w/ VR controllers: 1,059 USD/ 1,529 CAD/ 1,049 EUR/ 889 GBP/ 1,609 AUD/ 4,539 PLN
• Steam Frame (1 TB) w/ VR controllers: 1,299 USD/ 1,859 CAD/ 1,279 EUR/ 1,089 GBP/ 1,969 AUD/ 5,549 PLN

An additional Ergonomic Accessories Kit is available to purchase alongside the Frame. It includes two hand straps for the controllers, a head strap for the headset, and an extended light blocker. This costs 49 USD/ 69 CAD/ 59 EUR/ 49 GBP/ 89 AUD/ 229 PLN.

Be honest, were you expecting this sorta price for the Steam Frame? Some called it, due to the similar cost of a Valve Index for most of its lifespan; though I expect many of us adjusted our expectations following the onset of the memory crisis, and the subsequent launch of the Steam Machine. Our Andy called that the biggest victim of the RAMpocalypse, and you could argue something similar for the Steam Frame.

It's certainly been a journey for Valve. A week prior to the Steam Frame's launch, we spoke with two engineers at Valve about the project: Joy Lyons, hardware engineer, and Jeremy Selan, software engineer. The memory crisis and the price were a big part of that conversation. From that chat, we can confirm that Valve had aimed for a lower price point than the one it's launching the Frame for today.

Here's Lyons on the memory crisis:

"We set out to design this hardware with one particular price in mind, but we've made choices to make sure that we're making a product that is choiceful, that people can purchase, they can upgrade with different features later. But we wanted to make sure we had a base product with really great performance. Then that price target shifted due to the ongoing RAM crisis around the world."

Lyons also said that forecasting for the cost of certain components used in the Steam Frame is an ongoing challenge.

"We don't know what pricing is in the future. We try to monitor these things, but we're certainly very aware of it.

"We think it's a great, compelling product, and we are still happy to have it out there. We're happy to have our customers be able to have hardware during this RAM crisis, and we think it's important to launch new hardware out there and have new experiences available. But, yeah, I think everyone's disappointed by the RAM crisis."

Selan was the person that guided me through the Steam Frame and all of its features back at Valve's HQ in late 2025. They also lament the increase in price since that time: "I wish we could have shipped it at the price that we were at last year. It's still awesome today. It is amazing, but we were targeting a lower price, and I wish we could have done that."

The price puts the Steam Frame at a big disadvantage to the Quest 3. Even following a price hike, which Meta justified on similar terms to Valve, you can buy a Quest 3 for $600 today. Admittedly, I feel the Steam Frame is a better all-round device than the Quest 3, but the significantly higher price point of the Frame does leave the Quest 3 fairly unchallenged in the mainstream market, especially when it offers a similar level of fidelity to the Frame.

Memory is one factor for the Steam Frame's higher cost; the Frame has 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM, while the Quest 3 has 8 GB of LPDDR5. We asked Lyons and Selan about this decision and whether there was any discussion of shipping the Frame with less memory to save on cost.

"We looked at the Steam Frame pre-launch a few years ago, we said we can access this huge fraction of the same catalog [as the Steam Deck], or we can slice a major component off it and make sure that'll never run, if we do a lower limit," said Selan. "Now, granted, the trade-offs and cost and performance were a little different at that time, but even in hindsight, having a single target where we know what this generation will be capable of running is great, and we're very happy with that."

Meta also has the benefit of happily burning billions every quarter on its Reality Labs division, which is responsible for its Meta Quest headsets as well as its latest Orion smart glasses. While Valve isn't exactly strapped for cash, as far as cash flow goes, very few companies can spend as much as Meta without seeing much return on investment and not worry about it. That doesn't change much from a customer perspective, mind, many of whom will now have to weigh up whether Valve's device is worth an extra $450. Tough call.

The Valve Index might be outdated in many ways today, but it still holds a special place in my heart for its excellent audio solution: twin speakers that deliver impressive spatial properties without actually touching your ears. The Steam Frame doesn't take the same approach, sadly, but word from Valve is that it's working on a first-party accessory that'll add a set of Index-like speakers to the compact Frame.

The Steam Frame is modular. Three small switches are all it takes to completely remove the core module, containing the chip, RAM, storage, optics and more, from the strap. The strap also includes the battery, SD card slot, and speakers.

"So the battery, the thermals; I think those will be the ultimate limits of the device," said Jeremy Selan, software engineer at Valve during a pre-launch chat. "We thought of that early. It's no surprise. So that's why we were very proud of making a modular design where the core module is separate from the rear.

"And in fact, you might say, 'Hey, what is Valve going to do with this?' We're working on a future first-party accessory where it will plug in and replace the existing [strap]. That head strap will include a hot-swappable battery, and then premium Index-style off-ear audio."

When pushed for a date as to when this accessory might be available, Selan joked that he was one of the people who was confident that the Steam Frame would land in early '26, and no longer felt like a credible source on these things. Fair enough. He ended up saying, "we're working to make it available as soon as we can."

"The Valve Index audio is, I mean, it's awesome, and so we wanted to give people the opportunity to have that," says Joy Lyons, hardware engineer and audio expert at Valve. "And so it's a modular design. You just snap in, like Jeremy mentioned. That's not available at launch, but it's coming soon, and we'll have pricing and details on that."

The Steam Frame's speaker system is totally serviceable, anyways. I've been using the headset for three weeks and I've no complaints in that specific department. Lyons explained how this solution ended up being implemented.

"One of the design principles for the headset is being lightweight and also being portable, so you can collapse it. And so having any additional structure in the headband, that was something where early on it was clear, hey, that's going to interfere with our ability to collapse it and take it with you. And so we elected to put the audio into the head strap."

Lyons explained how they decided on two drivers on either side of the headset, but that these ended up pretty close to the core module. The core module contains all the camera and sensors for the Frame's inside-out tracking, which makes it very sensitive to vibration.

"The vibration caused the screen to jump with the bass, which is not as exciting as it sounds," Lyons said.

"So we were able to, with that early architecture, flip one of the drivers, and so the sound's coming out in phase. So you're getting your double sound output per side, but the vibration's been cancelled. And so we wanted to have this open-ear experience, so that really gives you that sense of immersion; you're not closed in, you're not hot, and it just builds a very natural sound."

The Steam Frame is a great way to game in virtual reality. I've been testing it for three weeks and I've played more VR games in that time than I have in many months. That's because, above all else, it's convenient. What used to slow me down with other headsets is mostly a thing of the past. I place the Steam Frame on my head and pick a game to play; VR has never been easier.

But I haven't always been sold on the Steam Frame. I spent the week prior to its arrival playing on the Pimax Dream Air, which includes the most spectacular Micro-OLED displays. That is a tough act to follow for any VR headset, let alone one with optics not dissimilar from the three-year-old Quest 3. As a long-term VR user and someone that's been privileged to play most of the best VR headsets in recent years, the Steam Frame felt too familiar an experience out of the box.

Over many weeks of testing, I've noticed more how the Steam Frame has eased a few of my fundamental gripes with virtual reality; things that cause me to leave my other headsets to gather dust on the shelf. Like how often I need to set up my playspace, set the floor height, peer out from my headset at my computer, adjust the strap, or untangle myself from a cable.

A wireless dongle included with the Frame takes care of the cable, delivering a seamless and reliable connection between it and a gaming PC. The fully-featured SteamOS means the first step upon donning the headset is choosing a game, and the second step playing it. The included controllers work with every game, VR or non-VR, and are tracked with pinpoint accuracy. And with such a lightweight design, this is one headset I'm not in a rush to take off.

I want to use the Steam Frame more than any other headset I own right now. That includes some that are double the price. Ack, I've mentioned money. Now I have to do the hard thing and bring this spiralling back down to Earth: The Steam Frame starts out a $1,059 for the 256 GB model. I haven't spoken to anyone, even Valve employees, who has much positive to say about the price. The memory crisis has done a number on the Steam Frame, as it did the Steam Machine.

The Steam Frame isn't a cheap way into virtual reality for the masses. It has to be viewed as an enthusiast offering; or, at the very least, you have to care a bit about VR to purchase one. Those of us wanting to try VR for the first time are still better off with a Quest 3 or Quest 3S for value for money; and those of us that already own a Quest 3—that's a lot of us—it's a tough upgrade, lacking any major visual overhaul. There are undoubtedly better options for enthusiasts looking for that, like the Bigscreen Beyond 2. Yet it is far more convenient than high-end headsets that still rely on Base Stations or heavy tethers.

Ultimately, I believe VR to be a holistic experience. Focus all your efforts on one aspect of a headset and the user experience is likely to suffer moreover for something else; the weakest link. Take it from me, even high-end optics fall flat after the umpteenth time resetting your playspace due to poor tracking. The Steam Frame does, then, have its virtues: It's by far the best all-round VR headset for user experience, with no major faults besides the price; it's just that price matters more than most.

Steam Frame - Gallery

Steam Frame - Features

Steam Frame - Optics

The Steam Frame's optics are, on paper, the least exciting thing about it. We've seen a handful of headsets with similar configurations, from the Quest 3 to the Pico 4 Ultra; neither of which are brand new.

Graphical fidelity feels much the same on the Steam Frame as the Quest 3. There's an amount of aliasing (jaggies) on straight lines and sharp details, which adds a touch of flicker as your head moves around. There is also a slight hint of chromatic aberration to the edge of some brighter details, such as the Steam Frame logo upon startup, though this is quite minor.

Text is clear to read when scaled appropriately, though can get tougher to make out when it's outside of the fairly large focal area of the pancake lenses or at a greater distance. Similarly, some details in game worlds can be lost when viewed from far away, and objects with meshes can get a little distorted or flicker—something that higher-end headsets, like the Pimax Crystal Super or Dream Air, don't suffer from. Those two headsets are available with Micro-OLED displays, which offer much more vibrancy and range of colour than the Steam Frame, but for huge price tags.

The Steam Frame offers, more or less, a level of quality that I've become accustomed to in relatively affordable VR headsets.

Where the Steam Frame outperformed my expectations is in binocular overlap. This is the amount of an image (given as a percentage) that is covered by both left- and right-side displays at the same time. It's not as often talked about as resolution and refresh rate, but it's hugely important for long-term comfort while wearing a VR headset. The Steam Frame has a pretty high binocular overlap, according to my own testing in the 'What is my Field of View?' application (more commonly called WimFov). This is with an IPD set to 64.

• Steam Frame - 77%
• Meta Quest 3 - 69%
• Pimax Crystal Super 50 PPD - 77%
• Pimax Crystal Super Micro-OLED - 86%
• Pimax Dream Air (standard FOV) - 86%
• Pimax Dream Air (wide FOV) - 77%

The Steam Frame is right up there with the best of them for binocular overlap, beaten only by the Micro-OLED optics used in both the Crystal Super and Dream Air. The Quest 3 has a lower level of binocular overlap, which can lead to discomfort or worsened 3D effects, though it does depend on your IPD and various other biological factors. I tend to struggle with headsets with a low overlap over time; they strain my eyes.

Binocular overlap, as measured in WimFov

Valve is pretty honest when it comes to the FOV. The Steam Frame's horizontal field of view (HFOV) is noted as 'up to 110 degrees', and lo and behold, I measured it at that. That's not as common as you might think. I often find the effective HFOV to be lower than the stated FOV. For example, all three of the headsets in the table below have a listed HFOV of 110 degrees.

There are a range of factors that can have an effect on effective FOV, not the least bit my own biology. Yet one big factor is the design of the padding between one's face and the lenses. Valve seems to have nailed the padding design to maximise the effective FOV; thick enough as to not be a detriment to the long-term comfort yet ensuring a one's eyeballs are right up to the lenses. Using the glasses spacer included with the Steam Frame will knock this back a touch.

Beyond the numbers, the Steam Frame's optics plonk you right into the game world. There's no visible distortion until the very extremes of the lenses, and even then it's not that bad by comparison to some. The gap around the nose is a little noticeable during gameplay, and made worse by the glasses spacer, but you have to be kinda looking out for it to notice it too much. That can be reduced with the extended light blocker in the Ergonomic Accessories Kit for an additional $59 (89 CAD / 69 EUR / 59 GBP / 99 AUD).

There is a degree of glare, as I find with most headsets with pancake lenses, but to a lesser extent than the Quest 3. It's only really noticeable when there's a very high level of contrast being displayed, which isn't all that often in my experience.

For the most part, when I'm trying to throw barrels, bottles, and cans at headcrabs in Half-Life: Alyx because I've run out of ammo, I'm not thinking about the FOV, binocular overlap, or glare; I'm thinking, 'Ah, ah, ah! No, no, please, just die already! Oh, god!'

That's positive, right?

Steam Frame - Performance

The best way to play on the Steam Frame is over the included wireless adapter. It's a USB Type-A dongle providing a 6 GHz connection beamed directly at a dedicated antenna on the Frame. Another antenna on the Frame connects directly to the local Wi-Fi. The Frame actually taps both connections for game streaming from a local PC; selecting between the two in real-time for the lowest packet loss and most robust connection.

I'm yet to notice any connection issues over the dedicated dongle, whether in my own home or in our busy office. Nor any visible dips in quality for the game being beamed across. That's really impressive, as Valve's is using what it calls Foveated Streaming to reduce the bandwidth requirements over the wireless connection. It does so by only streaming the game in the highest detail in the area where one's eyes are looking. The rest is streamed at a lower quality level. The Frame's built-in eye tracking has to keep up with your pupils to ensure a smooth experience—and it does a superb job of it.

The Frame supports a refresh rate up to 144 Hz, though it defaults to 90/72 Hz, depending on the power mode selected. In the battery-saving Playtime mode, it will only run at 72 Hz, which is pretty passable in my opinion. At the expense of battery life and processing power, it can run anywhere from 90–144 Hz in the settings menu.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (SM8650) chip does a pretty good job of rendering games locally. It does, however, require gentler programming in the graphics menu.

Take Half-Life: Alyx, for example, as Valve has created a version of the game that runs natively on the Snapdragon chip. It is of much lower quality than you'll experience by streaming the game from a local PC over the provided dongle. Valve has added foveated rendering to the game (dynamically changing the rendering level based on where one's looking) in order to improve performance. Unlike foveated streaming, foveated rendering is far more noticeable in my peripheral vision.

Though Half-Life: Alyx running at all on the Snapdragon chip is impressive, as are other games that are able to run just fine after being chopped up by the two compatibility layers, Proton and FEX. Proton deals with Windows to Linux; FEX deals with x86 to Arm. I tried out a few VR and non-VR games standalone on the Steam Frame and it often dealt surprisingly well with them. These included a few Steam Frame Standalone Verified games and one that hadn't yet been checked.

• Eleven Table Tennis (verified): smooth, high fps
• Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered (not verified): failed to run past splash screen
• Escape Room VR (verified): smooth, decent fps
• Hades (verified): smooth, high fps

Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered is Steam Deck Verified; however, that doesn't mean it will run on Frame, as it using FEX as well as Proton. Essentially, there are a few more hoops to jump through.

Hades, on the other hand, runs great via both translation layers. It's likely a boon to the Frame that the game has a Vulkan version already available. If I understand it correctly, Vulkan should let Valve skip some of the translation work and improve performance. The game reached around 100 fps, so it definitely didn't seem to suffer for any of the funny business in the background. It's best to set the Steam Frame's cap to beneath this figure, anyways, as it keeps the visuals steady and stable. Once I set the system to 144 Hz, which it couldn't reliably hit in Hades, moving my head would cause the game screen to shudder.

Eleven Table Tennis is a great reminder of when low latency and high refresh really matter in VR. I've been trying to beat the silver-level AI in that game for weeks now. I had, at times, thought it impossible, especially after trying and failing on three different VR headsets (Frame, Dream Air, Quest 3).

Installing the game on the Frame and running it locally at 120 Hz, with the ergonomic straps removed from the controllers to aid my front spin, I finally cracked it. I nailed some fast return balls that the stupid cat (the AI has a cat's face, don't ask) couldn't return. It was a silky smooth experience, even on the Frame's internal 'Turnip' Adreno GPU. I feel the local processing and high refresh really helped me here; but it drained the heck outta the battery on this thing: 50% gone in under 30 minutes.

Nevertheless, the standalone functionality feels less crucial to me. I will almost always stream games from my gaming PC via the wireless connection, due to the performance, quality, and battery life improvements I'll get onto shortly.

Steam Frame - Ergonomics

The Steam Frame weighs in at 440 grams. On my scales, it's more like 403 grams, but that's more a criticism of my crappy scales than anything else. What's important is that it is exceedingly light; the second-lightest from my own measurements.

• Steam Frame: 403 g
• Quest 3: 437 g
• Quest 3S: 454 g
• Crystal Dream Air: 280 g
• Crystal OLED: 848 g
• Crystal normal: 837 g
• Sony PS VR2: 499 g

Comfort in a VR headset is not all about weight, but in this case, the Steam Frame's small stature helps a helluva lot. Valve has balanced the weight of the Steam Frame across the front and back of the device, with the battery as a counterweight to the headset's 'core module', containing the optics, SoC, and most other technical bits. With the weight of the battery elsewhere, the core module weighs only 157 grams. Valve has that at 185 grams but hey ho; crappy scales.

Ample cushioning around the face and on the rear of the battery help to alleviate most discomfort from the weight of the device during play sessions. Unlike the Quest or older, heavier headsets, the weight does not feel like it is localised to your cheekbones or around the eyes. Even after hours of play to test the battery life, I didn't notice any patches of red or indentation lines on my face.

If you wear glasses, the Steam Frame is pretty accommodating. There's a spacer included in the box that adds another 4-7 mm between your face and the lenses. It's the easiest to add into the headset that I've used to date, too. It's all magnetically attached—the padding and glasses spacer can be replaced in no time at all.

Ergonomics accessories kit

Valve is offering an Ergonomic Accessories Kit as a separate purchase alongside the Steam Frame. It costs 59 USD/89 CAD/69 EUR/59 GBP/99 AUD and includes three premium upgrades:

• Controller straps w/ compatible battery doors
• Extended light blocker
• Top headset strap

I reckon most Steam Frame customers would buy the Ergonomic Accessories Kit without question. I probably would, too. But I've done my duty and played extensively with it fitted to the headset and without, and I have to say, it's really not a must-have.

The headset doesn't move around much with or without the added top headset strap. It is, however, useful if you're planning to pass the headset around a large group of people, as it makes it easier to adjust from person to person in a dash. I suppose if you're playing Beat Saber or anything a little more active, you may want the added support, but again, I don't think it's all that necessary.

The extended light blocker does a pretty good job of keeping light out from your nose, and that's especially true if you wear glasses like me; however, I've played mostly without and it's not been a detriment to my time in VR.

Then there are the most contentious upgrades of the three: the controller straps. These replace the cord straps included with the controller with straps that tighten around the entire hand, akin to the Valve Index design. Once installed, I can make better use of the finger sensing features of the Steam Frame controller (capacitive buttons combined with some sensing of the lower digits) and they're easier to slip into than the standard cord option.

On the flipside, the Frame's controllers are not as elegantly designed for this sort of strap as the Index's. I had a few members of the PC Gamer team try out the Steam Frame one by one in the office, and on numerous occasions I received the feedback that they cannot comfortably reach all the buttons. Take away the straps and that issue goes away.

In my experience, the straps are an improvement for games where grip plays a large role, such as Half-Life: Alyx. I can launch an item towards me and catch it naturally without thinking twice. Whereas without the straps, I had to sorta relearn to lift and grab, as two separate movements. But I definitely don't mind using the controllers without the straps, and for playing 2D games, the more natural position without the added straps feels best.

Steam Frame - Controllers and tracking

The tracking on the Steam Frame is excellent; perhaps even its strongest feature.

It's inside-out tracking using four monochrome cameras, combined with IR illuminators for low-light conditions. Those monochrome cameras aren't the best for passthrough or XR play—they offer a rough blue fascimile of the real-world behind the headset—but they work great for mapping the movements of the headset and controllers. That means no more Base Stations, as were required with the Valve Index; just the Frame itself keeping track of its position in VR.

What impresses me most is how consistent the boundaries of the playspace seem to be when using the Frame. It's yet to lose track of a boundary, floor height, or its own location within that space in my many weeks of testing. Whether I place it on the floor, move it around, turn it off and on again, or even move furniture around it, the playspace is locked in.

The headset does a great job with the controllers, too. The pair provided with the Frame support 6DOF and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) to correctly orient themselves in the world with excellent accuracy.

I'm yet to experience a single moment where one or both of my virtual hands go wandering off into the distance. Neither have I experienced what I will shamelessly call a floppy hand problem, where my virtual hand feels stuck on some invisible object and flops around like a fish as I try to wiggle it free. I have had both of those happen to me in the past couple of weeks with another headset, the Dream Air, but none so far with the Frame.

The Frame's controllers are similar in shape and style to those included with the Quest 3/3S. That's no bad thing; both are comfortable and intuitive. Yet Valve has also added more buttons to its latest pads, including ABXY on the right controller, a d-pad on the left controller, and bumper buttons to both.

These extra inputs aren't required a whole lot in VR; most devices don't make use of them. They are instead useful for playing 2D games on a virtual screen within the Frame. I've been testing this out with the original Hades: dragging the screen to a massive cinema-like size and putting my gaming chair into its deepest recline. It's pretty good, and even though I think the novelty of playing on a virtual big screen is already beginning to wear off, I can see why Valve says you can slip the Frame on and then decide which game to play. It can pretty much play whatever from your library with minimal fuss and without switching controllers.

For the record, you can pair up an external controller, keyboard, or mouse to the Frame over Bluetooth, including a Steam Controller. I haven't found much need to do so as of yet.

Steam Frame - Software

SteamOS is going places. Once limited to the Steam Deck and whatever one dared to load the ISO onto, it has since made its way into the living room and other handhelds. With the launch of the Steam Frame, the Arch Linux-based operating system breaks into the third dimension.

The Steam Frame offers a familiar interface for any PC gamer. It's just SteamOS, or Big Picture Mode, except its hovering in front of you. It has extensive menus for adjusting various settings on the Steam Frame, a status bar with some handy functions for VR, and a slightly tweaked interface for moving and enlarging windows within your expanded field of view. Otherwise, it's just Steam.

All your games in your library move over to the Steam Frame upon signing in. There are new categories automatically added to the interface to separate VR titles from non-VR titles, and in some cases, games are divided by those installed on the headset and those that can be streamed from a nearby PC. Once you select a game, you can click the arrow to the right of the green play button to select between playing it locally or streaming it from your gaming PC; depending on if it is installed on one or both devices.

Valve also offers the Steam Frame Standalone Verified program to give an idea of whether a given game is going to play nicely while running on the Frame's own hardware. Few games are built for the Frame—as far as I know, it's just Half-Life: Alyx—most are going to be either Android games running through Lepton, Valve's Android container, or use translation layers, Proton and Fex, in order to be made to run on Linux and Arm.

The Steam Frame wouldn't be around were it not for SteamOS, Proton, and FEX. Meta has Horizon OS, Google has Android XR, and Apple has visionOS for their respective headsets. Only Horizon OS feels in any way a fit for gaming, but even so, Meta has shifted to a more XR-centric interface and put a hold on third-party headsets using it. So that's out. That really means Valve had no other option than to do it itself with the Steam Frame.

And thank God for that. The biggest selling point for of the Steam Frame and SteamOS in virtual reality for me is that Meta has nothing to do with it. While you no longer need a Meta account for the Quest 3/3S, you still have to use the services of a company with big AI aspirations and a problematic privacy and safety record.

As for games available for the Steam Frame, it has plenty to choose from already on Steam, and it's set to benefit from Valve recently adding support to Steam for Android games. The Steam Frame also comes with a free copy of Half-Life: Alyx, and I can think of no better game that this to show off what it can do; able to both be streamed from a gaming PC and run locally on the Steam Frame's Snapdragon processor. It's the best VR game around today, despite being released over six years ago.

That touches on one issue facing VR in general today: the availability of new games and experiences. Plenty of the best VR games are the same ones we have been playing for many years, such as Beat Saber, Phasmophobia, Skyrim, Blade & Sorcery, Job Simulator, Arizona Sunshine; which I've pulled from Steam's own popularity rankings, among a sprinkling of newer titles. One newer title I've really enjoyed in the past year is Ghost Town, made by Fireproof Games, but even it is a year old now.

While Steam itself sees ever-increasing numbers of games published to the platform every single year, virtual reality games published on the platform have plummeted since an initial surge around 2017-18. Meanwhile, the Meta Horizon Store appears to still be trending upwards each year, though I can't be sure how many of those are actual games. A lot seem to be training applications.

If Valve can attract new developers to share their existing and future Android games on Steam, perhaps we will see a renewed surge of VR games on the platform. As of right now, it feels like fresh experiences are few and far between.

Steam Frame - Battery

You don't have to constantly worry about tripping over a cable with the Steam Frame. Instead, you have to be aware of your battery level.

The Steam Frame comes with a 21.6 Wh Li-ion battery, located at the rear of the strap. It has a USB 2.0 Type-C port off at an angle from its left-hand side, which is used pretty exclusively for charging the device due to bandwidth limitations for data.

There isn't an adapter included with the headset. Instead, it can be charged with any suitable power adapter up to 45 watts.

Valve is selling its own adapter for $29 (49 CAD/39 EUR/29 GBP/49 AUD). While I'm personally not too bothered about the lack of charger in the box—I have plenty already and I'm all for cutting out excess chargers—some of my colleagues feel it's a bit of a miss at this price point.

It takes a while to fully charge the Steam Frame from flat. In one test, using a 140 W Anker power adapter, it took 151 minutes to go from completely empty to fully charged. In another, using Valve's own power adapter, it took 142 minutes. So a good two hours and change for a full charge.

Here are the battery levels and times recorded from my testing:

Using a power meter on my wall outlet, I recorded the power draw in both tests around ~ 11 W at all times.

I asked Valve about the battery charging behaviour ahead of launch. They told me:

"An empty battery takes around two hours to charge to full capacity. However, the charging is not linear. There is fast charging from 0 to 65%, and regular charging from 65% and up. Charging to 65% is expected to take less than 40 minutes. (Note: these values may be optimized over time, and are therefore subject to change.)"

I hadn't seen any sign of fast charging to 65% in my own tests at the time I reached out; however, prompted by Valve's response, I tried one last test. I ran the battery down to near-flat, and while the headset was still turned on but not playing any games, I plugged in the charger.

This time, the power meter read ~31 W—three times the draw I recorded when the headset was powered off. When it reached 65%, it dropped to ~18 W.

I have felt a little impatient with the Frame on a few occassions—a feeling of having to wait too long between sessions once the battery had died. Though I did improve things by not letting the Steam Frame die completely between charges, using a suitably powerful power bank in my pocket (around 25 W should do it), and using the Frame's various power saving modes.

Depending on the mode of use, the Steam Frame can last between one and two hours of play time:

• Half-Life: Alyx (Arm version, running locally): 63 minutes
• Half-Life: Alyx (streaming from PC w/ Frame set to Playtime mode): 114 minutes

So, for every hour played in a game running on the headset, you'll be more or less charging for two; however, the longevity of the headset while streaming from a PC is pretty impressive.

I took these figures with the Frame set to Playtime mode, which favours battery life over performance and limits the frame rate to 72. You can push higher performance at a cost to longevity.

I noted the power draw of the headset in each mode while playing Half-Life: Alyx. When the game is running natively on the Steam Frame in standalone mode, the whole system draws around 17-19 W. Instead beam the game from my gaming PC using the included dongle and the Frame draws as little as 10 W. Nearly half as much power draw; nearly double the battery.

There may be another option for extending the Frame's battery life in future, too. Valve has confirmed to us it is working on a new strap with hot-swappable batteries and BMR drivers to match the excellent speakers on the Valve Index. This will be a swap-in upgrade for the modular Frame. No launch information for that one just yet, though.

As for the controllers, I'm yet to swap the AA battery located in each one since I began testing. Still going strong today at 74%.

Steam Frame - Value

There's only one Steam Frame worth buying. That's the 256 GB model. It's a VR headset that works best when streaming games installed on your gaming PC, and if you want to take advantage of the standalone functionality, there's an SD card slot for easy expansion.

That 256 GB model costs $1,059. So let's compare that price to its competition. The Steam Frame costs:

• 76.5% more than a Quest 3 512 GB;
• 8.6% less than a Bigscreen Beyond 2E, or 10% more than the Bigscreen Beyond 2;
• 53.9% less than a Pimax Dream Air;
• 6% more than a Valve Index at launch;
• 202% more than a Quest 3S 128 GB.

The Steam Frame is not as affordable as I'd like it to be. Nor my colleagues, some of whom literally winced as I told them the price. It's also more costly than Valve's original price target.

"We set out to design this hardware with one particular price in mind," says Joy Lyons, hardware engineer at Valve, "... that price target shifted just due to the ongoing RAM crisis around the world."

"We're happy to have our customers be able to have hardware during this RAM crisis, and we think it's important to launch new hardware out there and have new experiences available. But, yeah, I think everyone's disappointed by the RAM crisis."

I wish I could go one review without mentioning the damned memory crisis, or one chat with Valve without bringing it up. It has undoubtedly put a dampener on the excitement I felt for the Frame coming out of Valve's office in Bellevue nearly a year ago. One of the people that ecstatically showed off the Steam Frame to me during that visit was Jeremy Selan, a software engineer at Valve working on the Frame.

I had a chance to catch up with Selan again recently, and I asked him, 'if you could click your fingers and change anything about the Steam Frame today, what would it be?' Selan responded, "Price. I wish we could have shipped it at the price that we were at last year."

That's a question I stole from our Andy Edser during an interview he ran earlier this year with Valve on the Steam Machine. The response then from engineer Yazan Aldehayyat was much the same: "Make it cheaper".

So if you're disappointed about the price of the Steam Frame, you're not wrong to be, nor are you alone in that sentiment. It sucks.

What's tricky for Valve is that Meta seems to have inventory or money enough to have staved off another price hike for the Quest 3. For now, at least. The company raised the price of both the Quest 3 and Quest 3S in April, though remains at lower price than Valve can offer for not totally dissimilar hardware. Meta said at the time of that price hike, "we’re making this change because the cost of building high-performance VR hardware has risen significantly." And if trillion-dollar Meta is feeling it, you can bet Valve is too.

I wouldn't chastise someone for buying a Quest 3. You do get a lot for your money, even after the price hike. Yet if it were me with some money to burn on a VR headset today, I'd buy the Steam Frame. Convenience is king; and the Steam Frame has it nailed. While I might be in the minority of PC Gamer writers surveyed about this, I'd be willing to pay more for the ease of use and comfort provided by the Frame.

I'd also be willing to pay a bit more for the upgradeability that is being talked about here. It's only after taking the core module out myself and chatting to Valve about the modularity of the device that I've begun to realise why it's called the Steam Frame.

There's potential for plenty of upgrades here. From the full-colour RGB passthrough module from Arcturus that I've just started playing around with, or the hot-swappable battery strap from Valve, to whatever modders turn their mind to next. Building out my own Steam Frame to suit my needs over time is an exciting prospect.

The Steam Frame is ready for launch, and Valve has finally announced pricing and availability for its streaming/standalone VR headset.

There are two models of the Steam Frame available:

• Steam Frame (256 GB) w/ VR controllers: 1,059 USD/ 1,529 CAD/ 1,049 EUR/ 889 GBP/ 1,609 AUD/ 4,539 PLN
• Steam Frame (1 TB) w/ VR controllers: 1,299 USD/ 1,859 CAD/ 1,279 EUR/ 1,089 GBP/ 1,969 AUD/ 5,549 PLN

Valve has two additional purchase available alongside the Steam Frame at launch.

There's the Ergonomic Accessories Kit. This costs 49 USD/ 69 CAD/ 59 EUR/ 49 GBP/ 89 AUD/ 229 PLN and includes two hand straps (similar to the Valve Index's), over-the-head strap, and extended light blocker.

There's also a power adapter, which costs 29 USD/49 CAD/39 EUR/29 GBP/49 AUD. There's not one included in the box, though any USB Type-C charger of 45 W should cut it if you want to save the cash.

How to sign up for a Steam Frame at launch

If you don't mind the price, signups for a Steam Frame reservation can be made anytime between now and September 17 at 10 am Pacific Time on the product page.

Valve will be doing a one-time randomisation to determine who has a unit reserved for them and who is stuck on the waitlist. This takes place on September 17. From this, Valve will determine who has a unit reserved in their name and who is stuck on the waitlist.

Here's Valve on how the reservation system works:

• Folks can sign up for the model they’d like to purchase between September 14 and September 17 at 10 am Pacific Time
• When signups close, we’ll do a one-time randomization to determine reservation and waitlist order
• Based on the results of that randomization, customers receive an email later on the 17 indicating they are on the reservation list or waitlist
• Anyone coming to the product page after September 17 at 10 a.m. Pacific Time will be able to join the waitlist and will be added to the back
• We expect to send the first batch of purchase emails out on September 18, and will continue sending those out as units become available to ship
• For those on the waitlist, it means their place in line is beyond the number of Steam Frames currently available for reservation, and we will notify folks if and when they are moved into the reservation queue.

It's a similar system to the one Valve used for the launch of the Steam Machine, which so far seems to be working as intended. Orders for the Linux box were said to be going out daily back in July, with Valve believing then that it will be done with the reservation queue for the Steam Machine by the end of the year. In some regions, it had already begun offering units to those on the waitlist.

"We found the reservation system to be helpful in limiting resellers and improving the purchase experience," says Valve.

The Steam Frame is a different beast altogether, with a varied range of components and heaps of LPDDR5X memory chips, which could make life more difficult for Valve, but it seems the reservation system is at least working as intended. The main thing to note is that, by signing up ahead of September 17, you secure the best chance at a Steam Frame anytime soon.

If you play on a Steam Deck, or just rock with Big Picture Mode on your PC, the latest Steam client beta will be of big interest: It adds a new "Big Art Mode" that makes your home screen look a whole lot prettier (this is a subjective evaluation, yes, but I think it's prettier), a new screensaver feature, and a range of performance improvements and bug fixes.

The Big Art Mode is the big deal, so we'll start with that. Rather than the cluttered look of the standard interface, Big Art lowers the carousel of recently played games, and splashes, well, big art from the highlighted game across the backdrop.

So instead of this (not the video, the image below it):

You get this:

It's not quite perfect: Some games, like The Merlies, don't really adapt to the system super well.

Overall though, it's a cleaner and sexier look, ideal for those of you who prefer to keep things neat and tidy. And all the content offered through the old UI remains available, you just have to scroll down to see it now.

The new screensaver option in Big Picture Mode is also entirely cosmetic but very cool. You can choose from a slideshow of art from your recently played games, with or without your own screenshots included, or a "retro inspired bouncing logo" that has the Steam logo slowly bouncing off the edges of the screen, just like your dad's old DVD player. With a little effort, you can also set up custom screensavers.

Some of the less flashy stuff offered in this update is also very useful: Steam startup performance should be better following the update, the performance impact of game recording on some Direct3D 12 games on Windows has been reduced, and Linux support has been updated.

It's a beta, so there's always a possibility that things could go wrong, but Valve is generally very good with this stuff so I'd say it's not too much of a dice roll. If you want to check it out for yourself, you can opt into the Steam client beta by way of the Interface menu in your Steam settings. The full patch notes for the latest Steam client beta are below.

• Homescreen - Big Picture Mode
  • Added a new 'Big Art Mode' option for the home screen. This can be enabled in Settings > Home.
  • Added Personal Calendar to the Recommended tab on the home screen
• Screensaver - Big Picture Mode
  • Added a new screensaver feature, accessible in Settings > Customization. There are two screensavers available:
    • The default is a game art slideshow that can be configured to show artwork from recently played games and your recent in-game screenshots.
    • A retro inspired bouncing logo screensaver
  • Big Picture mode can also load custom screensavers. Similar to startup movies, they can be placed in the config\uioverrides\screensavers directory in your Steam install directory (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam or ~/.steam/root). You can use the bouncing logo screensaver (in the steamui\screensavers directory) as an example to get started.
• General
  • Improved Steam Client startup performance
  • Fixed a case where after server maintenance some users might fail to auto-reconnect to Steam
  • Fixed bug where being prompted to refresh credentials more than once could trigger an immediate restart
  • On Windows, using the systray menu to exit while the Steam window is minimized will no longer flash the window visible briefly
  • Dialogs that appear for serious error conditions now stay above the main window
• Game Recording
  • Fixed some cases where playback would jump to an unexpected point in the timeline when reaching the end of a play session or clip
  • Decreased performance impact of game recording for some D3D12 games on Windows
• In-Game Overlay
  • Fixed frame rate hitches in D3D11 and D3D12 games when taking screenshots on Windows
  • Fixed rendering the overlay and using other overlay related features (screenshots, game recording, etc.) in Vulkan games that create multiple windows.
• Big Picture Mode
  • Added explicit warning text to power menu confirmation dialogs when proceeding will shut down an active game
  • Updated default artwork when an app does not have library or hero artwork
  • Reorganized the idle timer settings when on battery and AC power
• Steam Input
  • Improved CPU performance at runtime and in configuration loading
  • Added information about which configurations are compatible in the configurator browser when using a game that requires Steam Input API
  • Fixed the controller support widget showing "This game doesn't support controllers" for unreleased games that don't have controller support information yet
  • Fixed controllers not using the desktop configuration on the desktop UI login window
  • Added the missing settings for adjusting emulated joystick adaptive centering on trackpad
• Linux
  • Improved download speeds on high latency connections.
  • The "Select compatibility tool" dropdown is now always visible.
    • The recommended compatibility tool, or steam runtime for native games, now shows at the top of the list as the "Default" option.
    • Compatibility tool aliases, e.g. "Proton Stable", can now be selected from this dropdown.
  • The SteamOS compatibility dialogs will now show in desktopUI when installing games not verified for that HW
  • On Desktop Linux we will now show the SteamOS unsupported dialog when installing games that are known to not work with Proton
  • Improve distro information collection for hardware survey, preferring data from /etc/os-release.
• SteamRT3 Experimental Beta
  • Fixed "Add a Non-Steam Game" showing an invalid list of applications.
  • Fixed the "Run Steam when my computer starts" toggle.
• Remote Play
  • A PIN is no longer required to download an app to a remote device. A PIN is still required to Install and Stream from a remote device.
  • Adding Download Complete notification for a remote download if you initiated the download on your current device.

While I've largely enjoyed any time I've dipped a toe into virtual reality, I definitely do not own a VR headset. As cool as the tech is, that hardware remains an expensive niche within the increasingly pricey PC gaming landscape.

Global VR headset shipments apparently declined by 18% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026, according to the latest data from Counterpoint Research. That doesn't surprise me—though it's also not great news for Valve or the potentially imminent release of its Steam Frame VR headset.

A dearth of major game releases is one reason why VR headsets aren't the most in-demand hardware. For instance, Valve's Half-Life: Alyx remains an unsurpassed high bar six-years after release. Counterpoint Research also highlights that VR isn't immune to the same pricing pressures as the rest of consumer hardware, citing Meta’s decision to raise the price Quest 3 and Quest 3S due to the memory supply crisis as adding "further pressure to an already cooling market."

Interestingly though, VR appears to enjoy consistent demand from businesses. "Enterprises and governments are generally less price-sensitive than consumers when adopting VR’s digital twin and spatial computing capabilities to address operational challenges and enhance productivity," Counterpoint Research says. "Meanwhile, driven by the continued development of the robotics industry, particularly in China, demand for VR headsets used for data collection and remote robot control is expected to grow this year."

Contrastingly AR devices, like Meta's smart glasses, have had an incredible year. "Global shipments of AR devices surged 138% [year-on-year] and 10% [quarter-on-quarter] in Q2 2026, driven by new product launches, international expansion by OEMs, and China’s 6.18 promotional campaigns."

Meta is easily the largest player in this space outside of China, with a 54% share of the AR/VR OEM market in the second quarter of 2026. There's definitely a lot I could say about the privacy concerns surrounding Meta's smart glasses—not to mention the money pit that is Reality Labs—but allow me to start bringing things back to Valve.

As far as we're concerned, the best VR headset overall is the Meta Quest 3, which will now set you back $600 at least. The best budget option, the Meta Quest 3S, now costs $350. Given the already mentioned RAMpocalypse, it will be impressive if Valve can offer its latest VR challenger at a price point that can compete. But given the pricing woes of the Steam Machine amid this here memory supply crisis, that could be a struggle.

Given that recent data mining suggests that, rather than making a debut with something new, the aforementioned six-year-old game might be the key launch offering instead, I'm a little unsure about Valve's footing. If you're already all-in on VR, then you've likely already got the hardware and you already loved Half-Life: Alyx when it first came out—but is the Steam Frame keeping a trick up its sleeve to justify Valve re-entering the 'cooling' VR market? Time will tell.

Valve rolled out 18+ age verification for Australian Steam users yesterday, which was inevitable: both PlayStation and Xbox have already done so and it is, after all, illegal not to, with fines up to AU$50 million at stake. But unlike PlayStation and Xbox, which offer a small handful of ways to verify one's adulthood, Valve has only one: you must own a credit card.

And no, your debit card won't work, or at least, mine doesn't. You'll need an actual credit card: a card that uses money you don't have, versus a card that uses money you do. It makes a bit of sense, because Australians need to be 18 to qualify for a credit card, whereas teenagers can own a debit card.

But there are other complications: You may be an adult and not qualify for a credit card because you don't earn enough money. You may not meet a particular bank's credit assessment criteria, as per CommBank. You may have a poor credit history. Or, you may simply not want to have a credit card because the prospect of spending money not in your possession is odd to you. If you fall under any of these categories—and I do the latter—then sorry: Valve won't sell you R18+ videogames.

It's not even possible to view the store page for an R18+ game. When I click on Doom 2016, I receive this message:

"Valve is required by the Age-Restricted Material App Distribution Services Code to verify that you are 18 or older before accessing mature content. If you wish to do so, please add a valid Australian credit card to your account and afterwards update the Mature Content Preferences."

As people online have pointed out, it's still possible to buy Steam keys for R18+ games from third-party sellers like Fanatical and Green Man Gaming, and then redeem them on Steam. So it's not a bullet proof answer, but then, few age verification methods are completely desirable. Third-party verification providers like Persona, for example, have raised serious privacy and information security concerns.

I've reached out to Valve to ask whether it intends to implement other age verification methods for Australian users and if so, when.

A release date for the Steam Frame has not yet been officially announced. However, data mining by VR leaker Brad Lynch has unearthed a reservation system in Valve's back-end, suggesting the hardware may not be far off.

Lynch shared a look at the definitely not yet live reservation system on X. "Expect nothing. It isn’t ready," he posted, accompanied by a screenshot of a lottery drawing notification email claiming the draw results would be revealed on the placeholder date of 31 December, 1969. Obviously, Valve aren't time travellers, and this date was likely chosen to avoid any part of this system going live before it's meant to.

Lynch wrote that the reservation system "is already up in Steam's backend for these two SKUs" in an earlier post, but shared no further hardware details. The data miner then added, "Before you ask: No. You can’t do anything with this information to beat the lottery system."

A reservation system isn't all that surprising, as Valve had these in place for both the Steam Machine and the new Steam Controller. The queue appears to have shortened for the Steam Machine since its June release, but Valve likely won't catch up on new Steam Controller reservations until 2027.

Uncovering a similar reservation system for Valve's VR headset is significant mainly because it implies a Steam Frame release could be close enough to touch. It also suggests stock may not be abundant to begin with—at least, not to the point that a reservation system wouldn't be necessary.

When Cookie Clicker and Candy Box both released in quick succession in 2013, I remember them being received mostly as a joke, or else as an amusing parody of "watch numbers go up" RPG gameplay. Then something weird happened: all my colleagues became fixated on Cookie Clicker. So did I. Lots of people on the internet, on Twitter and in various forums like Reddit, confessed to having become addicted to it.

Cookie Clicker did have an antecedent in Ian Bogost's Cow Clicker, which was a very deliberate satire. But Cookie Clicker wasn't presented as satire. And yet, it was so transparently meaningless that people doubted it could be anything else. You click a cookie repeatedly to generate more cookies. Once you earn enough cookies, you can invest those cookies into various ways of expediting the cookie making process. You click and watch numbers go up. It's stupid.

Fast forward more than a decade later and idlers, also known as incremental games, are massive on Steam. Last week, 54 games with the tag "idler" released. In total, there are 4,314 games with that tag on Steam.

Some of these look pretty good as far as idlers go. Next Reign: Kingdom has pretty handmade pixel art, atmospheric music and strategic elements. We Need More Humans! Has a novel premise—you have to become increasingly proficient at abducting humans—and, as far as this genre goes, a distinctive art style. Zad Archery's art style, on the other hand, is very generic but it has nearly 700 "mostly positive" reviews, so it must be doing something right.

None of those listed above are likely to rival genre heavyweights like Bongo Cat (currently being played by 135,803 people), Task Bar Hero (66,292 people) and Banana (3,628). But they have at least managed to rise above the onslaught of idler AI slop. The vast majority of the idlers that released on Steam last week have an AI disclosure.

And many of them look oddly, almost uncannily similar. Compare the UIs in the gallery below:

There's a special fondness for a roughly similar shade of blue, isn't there? They are not pleasant UIs. What is going on here? Why do these games all look roughly the same?

A quick look at their AI disclosures may be telling. Vespera has "AI generated images and other AI made components". Nexus: "Some assets were created using AI. I'm not as [sic] artist lol." Brainrot Clicker, fittingly, has "some pre-generated visual assets, written content, and development-related creative work", while Path of the Idle Cultivator used AI "for UI and some translations".

These are just four examples: browse the raw unfiltered list of Steam idler games and you'll find many, many more examples of games with loosely the same approach to UI, both in terms of layout and that gravitation towards a dark blue background colour.

The amount of games bearing the idler tag spiked dramatically last year, according to SteamDB. In 2020 there were 100, in 2024 there were 647, last year there were 1033 and this year—so far!—there are 1811. There are 1119 coming soon and 380 "TBA".

I don't mean to be too dismissive of the idler as a genre: there are decent examples. But the whole situation feels almost implausibly silly: Steam is being flooded with thousands of mindless "numbers go up" games developed primarily with the aid of generative AI. It's got to be the quintessence of brainrot.

If you'd told me in 2013 as I dumbly clicked on cookies that this was the future of the idler genre, I wouldn't have believed you at first. Then, maybe five minutes later, after giving it some thought, I'd probably have to admit to the inevitability of it.

Top Steam games by revenue (August 25 - September 1)

Star Wars Zero Company tops the list, which wasn't necessarily guaranteed: yes, it's a Star Wars game, but it's also a strategy RPG in the style of XCOM. Unfortunately, the offices at Bit Reactor probably aren't thrumming with post-launch elation: 80 percent of its workforce has reportedly been furloughed.

The Blood of Dawnwalker and Onimusha both released after the period tracked by this chart, but for what it's worth—and perhaps that's not much—The Blood of Dawnwalker's pre-orders had it at 17, while Onimusha came in at 28. Given The Blood of Dawnwalker has already sold a million units just three days after release (across all platforms) but we don't know how Onimusha has done.

Elden Ring Tarnished Pack came in at 29, which is quite low considering it's Elden Ring DLC. Most reviews suggest it's not worth the $5: "Not worth the money," one Steam user wrote. "Should have been free as it is a very small update made to promote the launch of the game on the Switch." A lot of reviews are in agreement.

Last week's Steam deep cuts

It's strange to think about in hindsight, but Left 4 Dead 2 was a controversial game in the run-up to its release in November 2009—just one year after the original Left 4 Dead laid the foundations for today's enormous cooperative gaming scene. Indeed, it was that rapid turnaround, combined with the fact that the first Left 4 Dead was a relatively short game, which led to accusations that Left 4 Dead 2 was nothing more than a cynical ploy by Valve to cash in on the success of the first.

Ultimately, Left 4 Dead 2 would prove a worthy follow-up to Valve's cooperative blaster. But it turns out there was some skulduggery afoot behind the scenes on Left 4 Dead 2, just not the kind that fans suspected. Shortly before the sequel's launch, a cinematic trailer—which would ultimately serve as Left 4 Dead 2's introductory cutscene—leaked onto the Internet. Now, it's been revealed that this 'leak' was orchestrated by Valve to evade the censorious watch of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board.

This is according to former Valve writer and Left 4 Dead designer Chet Faliszek, who revealed Valve's deliberate leak in a YouTube video about cut Left 4 Dead voice lines (via Ars Technica). In the video, Faliszek explains why Left 4 Dead 2 had a large number of voice lines cut from the final game. One reason was that, at the time, Valve had run-ins with numerous countries and ratings boards over the series' depictions of violence and use of profane language.

"You have to remember, especially during Left 4 Dead 1 and Left 4 Dead 2 time, Valve was in fights with the ESRB, with Australia, with Germany, with a bunch of countries about the profanity in the game, or the violence," he explains. "One of [Valve's] lawyers stepped in and said that us writers needed to be babysat on this. And so [the] first thing we did was, well, we made sure there was no profanity in there that crosses the line—basically F-bombs."

Faliszek personally believed that, when it comes to censorship of language and depictions of violence, "you push it and have the ESRB push back". But Valve's lawyer felt differently and Faliszek went along with it. However, the ESRB's regulatory oversight didn't just cover games, but extended to the marketing material for those games. And unlike today, the ESRB had different regulatory rules for trailers and games. Language or violence that might land a game a 'Mature' rating could result in a trailer that depicted the same things being banned outright.

It's this exact scenario Valve faced with Left 4 Dead 2. The cinematic trailer is no more violent or foul-mouthed than the game itself, but according to Faliszek, the ESRB drew a hard line on it. Hence, Valve decided the trailer should find its way online by 'accident'. "We leaked our trailer ahead of time, because they wouldn't let us release the trailer," Faliszek says. "I'll just admit that. I think we can't get in trouble for that now. It's like 20 years ago."

Valve's handheld launched in February 2022, opening the door to playing your Steam library on the go. Now, almost half a decade later, 30,000 games either enjoy the green stamp of being Steam Deck verified, or are at least considered 'playable.'

According to the latest numbers from SteamDB that breaks down to 8,964 Steam Deck Verified games and 21,083 games considered 'playable' on the handheld (via Gaming On Linux). That's a big jump from the 3,000 games either Verified or Playable back in May 2022.

'Verified' means your game of choice should work great on the Steam Deck from first boot, whereas 'Playable' games require either some finagling or adjustments for the best experience. Steam Deck verification is also joined by similar compatibility checks for the Steam Machine, the soon-to-be-released Steam Frame, and SteamOS more broadly. I make the whole thing sound straightforward, but it's worth noting that the Steam Deck's full verification criteria can present developers with confusing hoops to jump through.

One more thing to note: a game with neither badge doesn't necessarily mean it won't run on the Steam Deck at all. For just one example, Dragon Age: Origins is officially 'Unsupported,' but our Shaun says it runs incredibly on Valve's handheld. Granted, that's a 17-year-old game, but I think the point of 'Unsupported doesn't always mean a no-go on the Steam Deck' still stands. The thing you might want to be more wary of is how the kernel-level anti-cheat systems often used in competitive games don't play well with the handheld's Linux-based SteamOS.

And it doesn't mean games will always be playable on the Steam Deck. Ubisoft recently announced that it is "removing For Honor from the Linux platform to ensure a safer environment for our players as we cannot meaningfully deploy protection on this platform." Which means no third-person melee fun for you on Steam Deck, so from September 10 there will be one less game playable on Steam Deck.

Anyway, for a bit more context, SteamDB also says well over 130,000 games total have been released on Steam to date. SteamDB's figures suggest there were half as many games on Steam back in 2022. With the platform having grown so significantly in just the last four years, the days of 10% of all Steam games enjoying official Steam Deck compatibility feel so long ago.

Folks who pick up Valve's soon to be released VR headset, the Steam Frame, may get a free Half-Life game with their purchase. Unfortunately, I'm not talking about a brand new release. Plus, it may well be a game virtual reality gamers already have—Half-Life: Alyx.

Dataminer Brad Lynch unearthed this tidbit, sharing a screenshot of code strings that refer to a 'Frame Alyx Promo'. He also observed on X that Valve did a similar thing in the past, offering the game for free with purchases of the Index VR headset after the game launched. That all occurred, of course, quite a few years ago now.

Lynch also noted in an earlier post that internal branches of Alyx had been regularly updated since early last year, though "the public app is only just now starting to get those many months of staged updates." The implication is that these are optimisation tweaks specifically for the Steam Frame, though that's not been confirmed.

Lynch is fairly reliable as a leaker regarding all things VR, having previously spotted that a number of SteamVR code components had been renamed 'Frames' shortly before the Steam Frame was fully revealed.

More recently, he spotted "the first 'official' Android app on Steam," which would make the most of all of Valve's work on its custom Android compatibility container for Linux, Lepton. Lynch also suggested back in June that the entire VR sphere may enjoy much better displays in the next few years, like Micro-OLEDs from Samsung.

So, no, it doesn't seem that Half-Life 3 is on the horizon, but I won't turn down a free copy of one of the best virtual reality games to come out in years. Mind you, the fact Alyx itself is already six years old probably says a lot about the state of VR these days.

While the Steam Frame is designed to play your entire non-VR library as well, given the lack of big releases in the niche, I personally won't be rushing out to buy a fresh virtual reality headset any time soon.

On Saturday, information began circulating online about a massive, 12-terabyte leak of Valve data that included prototypes of numerous classic Valve games. But it seems what is now being dubbed the "teraleak" contained far more than just old builds of Portal 2 and possible weapons from Half-Life 2: Episode 3, and may include prototypes of countless third-party games released on Steam over a ten-year period.

Specifically, the leak consists of Steam file groups known as 'depots' which were stored on Steam's servers between 2003 and 2013. A full list of these depots was shared on Reddit by user RefreshingCapybara, which includes depot names for hundreds of games as well as trailers, teasers, soundtracks, demos, game trials, and more. "Not to be hyperbolic, but this may be one of if not the biggest leaks to occur," RefreshingCapybara commented in sharing the list.

To be clear, the list doesn't show us what—if anything—is contained within those file groups. But as reported by Ars Technica, game preservation website Hidden Palace has identified numerous depots with obtainable builds in them. These include various prototypes of Spec Ops: The Line, Sid Meier's Civilization V, Mafia 2, and Grand Theft Auto 3.

According to Ars, it's also likely that the builds included in the leak are from a collection that has been amassed from various sources over time. Many game builds from before 2013—which is when Valve switched its content distribution pipeline from Steam2 to SteamPipe—were considered lost media up to now. Clearly, though, they were more accessible than Valve or anyone else realised.

As such, it's possible the leak is the product of multiple people pulling together builds from various sources (like old PCs) into one enormous archive. The most interesting clue to the leak's origins is a readme file contained within the leak, which includes the line "warm n good wishes to all hoarders who had stuff from this collection".

The fact that the build includes so many third-party prototypes may also make it legally perilous. "That archive contains a significant amount of third-party content, meaning we are dealing with a dramatically more dangerous situation than if it were just some Valve builds," wrote YouTuber and Valve specialist Tyler McVicker on social media.

Given the sheer amount of data that has been leaked, it will likely be some time before we know the true extent of what it contains. On the Valve side, dataminers have already unearthed a complete version of Portal 2's 2009 "beta", as well as prototypes for Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and even some files from Valve's cancelled puzzler F-STOP.

A ridiculous amount of games release on Steam every week and basically none of them make any money. It only takes a cursory browse of Steam's unfiltered new release list to understand why this is true.

But which genre is most likely to make money or be a hit? Ichiro Lambe, Matt Martindale and Dr. Tim Ermilov have collaborated on a Steam revenue report on weloveit.io and, as the name implies, the purpose of the site is to estimate the earnings of all Steam games, or at least, those with a price tag and at least one review.

The trio doesn't have access to Valve's internal sales data, so they rely on the Boxleiter method to estimate that data, which assumes that a games' review count is "roughly proportional of its sales, so multiplying reviews by a constant gives an estimated unit count." For a standard estimate (rather than a conservative or generous one) the multiplier is 35 times the amount of user reviews.

This may not provide exact figures, but as the site notes, it's a technique used by analysts and publishers and there aren't very many better ways to arrive at a sales estimate. And so, in the style of all great data enthusiasts, they've used the technique to map the success (or lack thereof) of over 100,000 Steam games in handy graph form.

Baldur's Gate 3 is estimated to have made $1,795,480,003 since its early access launch in late 2020. On the other hand Free Solo, a physics climbing game released in March, has made an estimated $34.

In the graph below every dot is an individual game (for a much better view of this graph you'll need to visit weloveit.io).

I was fascinated by the "genre economics" section, which uses user tags to get a sense of how genres rank on Steam. "A game counts towards a genre only when the tag is one of its six most popular tags," according to the study, so there needs to be pretty unanimous agreement among Steam users that the tag is accurate.

According to the data, sandbox games have the highest "hit rate" on Steam. Hit rate measures the amount of games with the tag that have made more than $100k. The sandbox tag has a 27.3% hit rate.

Of course,"sandbox" is unwieldy and impractical as a genre designation: the most popular games with the tag are unhelpfully different: Terraria, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Project Zomboid. But it does at least demonstrate that games promising some amount of freedom are preferred by Steam users, whether they be sloppy retail sims or $400 million cowboy adventures.

The next tag, FPS, is probably the "real" genre winner. It has a 21.6% hit rate, though keep in mind a lot of games that aren't strictly focused on shooting, like Schedule I or Portal 2, are tagged with FPS.

Here's the top 10 genres on Steam according to their hit rate:

There aren't a huge amount of surprises in that list. I guess I'm surprised to see visual novels rank so highly, though they are ubiquitous on Steam. Sports probably ranks highly because there are fewer games to which it applies compared to, say, "puzzle", a tag with a 9.5% hit rate.

The lowest ranking tags (according to report's list, at least) are probably more telling. Hidden Object games have a 5.4% hit rate, while 2D platformers have a 5.5% hit rate. Developing a game in either of those genres is thus, according to the study, risky business. Though they may also be cheaper to develop, and thus more common, and thus less likely to be discovered.

The full study is well worth browsing because it's full of great insights. For example: 2D platformers have severely dropped off in popularity since their heyday of 2016, but visual novels have remained almost consistently popular since 2014.

Top Steam games by revenue (August 18 - 25)

First of all, its worth noting that Star Wars Zero Company released on the 28th, and its review embargo lifted on the 26th, so next week's chart will better reflect its launch performance. It still came in at number 12, rising 12 positions for what must have been an eleventh hour rush on pre-orders (there were cosmetic pre-order incentives).

Based on the chart—which is, as always, a reflection of best performers by revenue and not necessarily by units sold—Mortal Shell 2 had a successful launch, but probably no where near as successful as How to Fish. The latter is a 1-4 player "physics-based fishing simulator, and while it looks like quintessential friendslop on the surface, it's a whole lot more violent than normal. It looks very fun.

The Wardogs beta obviously paid off as a taster for the full game, which releases next month. As for Stalker 2, it got a massive 2.0 update last week and a steep discount, hence its reappearance on the list.

Last week's Steam deep cuts

A massive cache of internal builds from Valve has reportedly leaked online, including beta builds of several classic Valve titles and possible weapons from Half-Life 2's cancelled third episode.

The leak, which began circulating on Saturday and comes from an unknown source, includes 12 terabytes of data currently being sifted through by data miners. The files are dated from a ten-year period between 2003 and 2013, and include builds and assets of many Valve projects across that timespan.

Thus far, data from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Left 4 Dead, and Portal 2 have all been claimed to feature in the leak. This reportedly includes the complete Portal 2 beta from 2009, a much sought-after artifact for Portal 2 fans.

The 2009 beta has a somewhat different story from the final game. It still takes place in the ruins of Aperture Science, but sees you guided through the initial test-chambers by pre-recordings of GLaDOS rather than Wheatley, and features other personality cores much more prominently. Curiously, a team of beta researchers and enthusiasts recently released a Portal 2 mod that attempts to recreate the beta build as accurately as possible, a project that took four years to realise.

In addition, Valve-focussed YouTuber and enthusiast Gabe Follower reports that the files include the Weaponizer, an unfinished weapon that has been previously linked to Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Information about the Weaponizer appeared in a separate leak that occurred in 2011, inside a directory labelled "ep3", while a gun that resembles the Weaponizer was shown in footage of Episode 3 that appeared in Valve's 20^th anniversary documentary on Half-Life 2 (via Gamerant).

Also apparently included are files (but apparently not a working build) of Valve's cancelled puzzle game F-STOP, a precursor to Portal 2 that was in-development for around a year before Valve canned the project. Also known as 'Aperture Camera' F-STOP featured a mechanic similar to the one seen in 2023 puzzler Viewfinder, in which the player takes photographs of the environment which can then be applied as 3D objects in the game world.

While it's not clear where the leak originated from, it has been linked to Valve's Steam2 content-server infrastructure, which was replaced by SteamPipe in March 2013, which would explain why the latest files from the archive are from that year.

I have contacted Valve for comment on the leak and will update this story with any response.

I don't envy Deadlock players who are dying to see the hybrid MOBA-shooter continue to grow in its pseudo-early access state. Valve is notoriously elusive when it comes to communication and has never made any promises to update it on a regular schedule.

This is the kind of uncertainty that drives Deadlock players to salivate over any new rumor or post by the developer-run Discord and forum account known as Yoshi. It's also what drives them to keep watch over the pizzerias near Valve's Seattle offices for spikes in visitors in the hopes that developers are lining up for grub as they finish the next major update.

This week, Deadlock players were hoping Valve would release its follow-up to the Old Gods, New Blood update, which added six new heroes to the game along with other major changes. Valve previously said a "large content update" was in the works alongside two other smaller updates to its ranked mode and items. But now that the ranked rework is out of the way, players were hoping to see another update before the end of the month.

According to a new post from Yoshi, the update is taking longer than expected. Yoshi doesn't specify if they're talking about the item update or the large content update—it almost implies they've been combined into one patch—but said it's going to have to wait until "late September."

"The delay is mainly due to the regular process of playtesting and iteration sometimes taking longer than expected, rather than a change in the scope of the update itself," they wrote. "We hope you will like the update when it comes out, and we'll make sure to give you a heads up (or order a ton of pizza) when things are a few days away or so."

Even though Valve has kept Deadlock an invite-only game since its debut, the last year of updates have gotten it to a place that feels like it could go fully public as an open beta. You never know with Valve, a studio that has spent years on projects only to quietly abandon them before. But the Old Gods, New Blood update was the first time it made a big deal of a new patch, creating an entire webpage dedicated to it and letting the community vote on the release order of the new heroes.

It was an unprecedented level of effort that seemed to suggest Deadlock had a relatively large amount of weight behind it for a Valve project. Since then, the updates have kept a steady pace.

Whether or not Yoshi's acknowledgement of the pizza thing is tongue-in-cheek, it does make it seem like the team behind Deadlock is aware that players desperately want more from the game and that it plans to deliver on that as fast as it can. I hope it also means Deadlock is closer than ever to opening the gates for everyone to try its sharply-designed mix of MOBA and hero shooter mechanics.

One of the quiet tragedies of Valve's game library is a standalone Ravenholm game that never came to fruition—it was being worked on by Arkane Studios in the late 2000s, and it would've probably been pretty damn good if Valve had the moolah to make it. Over a decade later, an entire hour of footage would drop online, with reports stating that around 10 levels had been fleshed out prior.

Now, almost 20 years later, Arkane's founder Raphaël Colantonio has managed to find his zen with the heartbreak, speaking with Press Box PR in an interview earlier this month (thanks, GamesRadar+).

"It took us a decade to move on from the pain of the Ravenholm project because we were incredibly excited about doing that game and we put in a lot of creative energy into it and eventually when the decision was made to cut it, we did not understand it as it happened," said Colantonio. "We were young and we were just refusing to see the reality of the situation, and the reality was much simpler than the way it looked to us."

Colantonio, who left Arkane in 2017 but was instrumental on one of its all-time greats, Dishonored, says that "it all came down to the economics behind Half Life 2 and how the DLCs were selling. They had a business ratio between how much they could spend and how they could make it to be worth it to them, because it takes the attention of the entire structure on their side."

With time to reflect, Colantonio views Arkane's involvement as more of an experiment in retrospect—especially given that a Ravenholm game had already been in development between 2005 and 2007: "They thought, you know, why not try these guys? We seemed pretty effective and eventually, like the two other attempts that they had looked at, we went somewhere with it, and it was cool. What we had was really, really cool.

"But it still needed more time, and too much time to finish … There was a business call at some point where it was decided that it didn’t really make sense. It was very painful for us but it made sense, we grew up and got a little bit more mature about it."

It's not all bad, though. It got them in touch with Viktor Antonov, a concept artist whose work was instrumental in forming the aesthetic of both Half Life and Dishonored. Antonov sadly died in 2025: "Eventually he joined us to create Dishonoured and we did not betray the Valve mentality. We learned a lot from them, actually. It’s just that we probably snuck in some of our own Arkane stuff in there as well."

Honestly, while I'm glad Colantonio's found peace, I can't help but feel a touch melancholy. The same Arkane that couldn't ship a game, but got a second chance with Dishonored in the 2010s, is now cleaved in two, with Arkane Austin closed entirely by Microsoft, and a thin film of French law protecting Arkane Lyon. Not that the earlier videogame industry was a cakewalk, Ravenholm's ill fate proves that, but still. It was a different time.

Vapor World: Over The Mind is a Soulslike Metroidvania with an evocative, painterly art style reminiscent of Lies of P and the narrative platformers of Playdead. According to Korean studio Alive Inc, the game had 100,000 wishlists just before its early access launch on August 19, mostly on the strength of a demo available since January 2025.

But what should have been a triumphant early access launch went pear shaped very quickly. At launch, few talked about the quite distinctive worldbuilding or the parry-heavy combat. Instead, all focus was trained entirely on something absent from the popular demo: very obvious AI use.

"Saw the very first cutscene, before any gameplay, and how the generative AI they used couldn't even keep the main character's model consistent," reads the "most helpful" Steam review for Vapor World. "From the trailers the gameplay looked pretty fun [but] unfortunately I support people not robots. If the look you want to go for is beyond the scope you can achieve right now then I suggest you change it or wait until you can produce the art and style you want with people doing it."

That's pretty representative of the Steam reviews at the moment: Vapor World is currently sitting on 64 "mostly negative" reviews.

It's undoubtedly a disappointing result for Alive Inc, whose headcount is "about five" according to the studio. It's also possible the studio was blindsided by the backlash: this Pew Research Center survey places South Korea as the least AI sceptical nation among 25 countries surveyed, including the US, the UK, Australia and India. According to MIT Technology Review, the South Korean government has overwhelmingly embraced AI. It even tried to roll out AI-powered school textbooks (which failed).

Half (or in some cases, slightly less) of those surveyed in the US, Italy, Australia and Brazil are "more concerned than excited" by AI use in daily life. In South Korea, those "more concerned than excited" by AI make up only 16 percent.

There's a trace of surprise in the inevitable statement made by studio director Young Kim, who promised the AI-generated cutscenes would be replaced "by this weekend" (this has already happened).

"If someone asked me what I think about using AI, the honest answer is that I would have to think about it for a long time," the director wrote. "The reason I chose AI was that I believed it could reach a level of expression our existing resources could not, and that it would let us focus more on the game itself, outside of story and cinematics."

He continued: "That was a hasty judgment on my part. Unless AI takes one more leap and reaches a point where no one can tell the difference, what I believed was still closer to an ideal than a reality. I expected some of you would be disappointed by our use of AI. I did not expect it to become this big."

The statement then hits upon a question that will be raised again and again in the coming months and years concerning creative work: if AI can do it better, why not? In this instance, it unambiguously could not: the cutscenes, and I've seen them, are quintessential slop, and compare very unfavourably to the in-game art. Young Kim says the studio originally composed the cutscenes in-engine, but later replaced them with AI. Somehow, his team didn't detect this chasm.

"The truth is, we spent a long time trying to tell this game's story with cutscenes made entirely by our own hands," the statement goes on. "The results were devastating every time. We came to believe we could not properly deliver this game's complex, difficult narrative that way, and that is why we turned to AI. But if that choice hurt your experience, the fault is not in the tool. It is in our own shortcomings."

Alive Inc joins a long list of studios who have reneged on AI use after extreme public backlash, including Larian Studios and Sandfall Interactive. Vapor World isn't wholesale slop—the studio worked hard on the core game and it shows—but the outcry surrounding its launch does show that using generative AI to cut corners isn't, for now, something audiences are willing to tolerate.

Top Steam games by revenue (August 11 - 18)

Overall a pretty unremarkable week for the top ten. Kingdom Hearts is there because Square Enix hosted a sale. Phantom Blade Zero pre-orders opened.

The top 11-20 part of the list is arguably more interesting: Mortal Shell 2 debuted at number 12, Wardogs pre-orders catapulted it to number 13 (though its current beta is apparently blowing up, with an all-time concurrent players peak of 105,774), and the Lord of the Rings: War in the North reissue has sold decently enough to help it reach number 17.

As for Wardogs: expect it to factor heavily into the charts in the coming weeks ahead of its September 11 release date.

Curiously, Star Wars Zero Company pre-orders debuted at number 24, way below Phantom Blade Zero and Wardogs pre-orders. Star Wars fatigue perhaps?

Last week's Steam deep cuts

Steam review of the week

"If you Spam Punch the Dude in the start of the game you Can level your unarm to level 100.

10/10 Broken just like Morrowind"

Skybob, on The Lantern of the Laughless Saint, who I'm sure is also relentlessly bunnyhopping to increase Acrobatics.

As we've reported on many times over the years, Valve's hardware efforts attract the attention of the DIY project community like no other. The Steam Controller is no exception, as creator Owen Feldman has managed to get classic text adventure Zork running on its internal hardware.

Feldman has documented the project on their blog, but it wasn't always a smooth ride to convince the controller to play ball (via Hackaday). An internal tool discovered within a Steam hardware updater folder was used to flash the firmware—but Feldman managed to temporarily brick their controller in the process.

After recovering the controller, a custom Rust-based program was used to emulate an Intel 8080 CPU and run the CP/M-80 operating system on the Steam Controller's internal processor. As the device has no keyboard or screen, the built-in USB connection was used for I/O streaming purposes.

So, what do you do first when you've successfully convinced a controller to emulate a CPU and run an OS all on its own? Well, you play games on it, of course.

A floppy disk (hey, remember those?) copy of Zork was used to load the game via an external drive, resulting in a Steam Controller rig that's been connected to a remarkable number of add-on devices. I doubt it knows exactly what hit it.

Still, the end result looks like a very playable experience. Feldman describes the process of creating the custom program as "1514 lines of pain," but what they've ended up with is the PC hardware equivalent of a magic trick. Who knew the Steam Controller could play games in its own right?

However, I think I'll be leaving this Steam Controller-flashing method well alone, and not just because my Rust coding abilities are non-existent. Feldman warns that bricking your device through the flashing process is a real possibility, and given that it's a $99 piece of kit, perhaps it's better to leave this one to the braver hardware hackers among us.

Our Jacob got his hands on a Steam Frame back in November of last year, and came away raving about the wireless VR headset's capabilities. Since then, we've reported on numerous signals that the Frame is on its way—but some new leaked videos give the rest of us a closer look at the hardware itself.

The videos were apparently leaked as part of an Arm Steam Client update, and have since pulled by Valve (via SteamDeckHQ). However, X account Steam Hardware Updates has reposted them, and what they reveal looks to be a very cushy, premium-looking design.

In one, a model demonstrates the process of putting on the Frame and adjusting the headband, including swapping out the internal faceplate to accommodate a pair of glasses. The large, cushioned rear-plate looks very comfortable, and the overall design is remarkably less... nerdy, for want of a better word, than I expected.

This particular video ends with a sequence of models wearing the VR headset in several, completely wrong ways, including as a shoulder bag. Even I smiled. There's also another video showing how to link the Steam Frame with the Steam mobile app for sign-in authentication purposes.

The focus adjustment wheel is demonstrated in another clip, while a full unboxing video shows exactly what you get in the packaging. There's the headset itself, of course, two wireless controllers, a large USB dongle, a cable, and an instruction manual/warranty card that's immediately thrown out of shot.

The video also shows the pairing process for the controllers, while even more clips posted in a separate comment go through what appears to be a short Steam Machine linking tutorial.

Ordinarily I'd advise a pinch of salt regarding leaks like this, but these are so well-done, I'd say we're probably looking at the final product. Valve is unlikely to be pleased—but I have to say, as someone not particularly interested in VR, the videos have made me want to try one for myself.

As for when the Steam Frame might be released? There's no official date as of yet, but the timing of these leaks suggests it won't be too long. We were told the second half of 2026, and here we are towards the end of August with plenty to go on. I wasn't that fussed before, but now the hype is beginning to build? Yep, even this VR cynic is kind of curious.

Lord of Undead is a "grim" third-person RPG about building an army of vicious zombies in order to maliciously raze the villages of mortals. The goal is to defeat peace and innocence, all the better for evil to prevail. You also get to build houses. It sounds pretty fun and, as far as I can tell, it's the second most popular game releasing on November 19 behind GTA 6.

Lord of Undead does have some advantages. The most obvious is that GTA 6 isn't coming to PC. It also has the most "Follows" of all Steam games releasing that day. Follows are different to wishlists: to follow a game is to see news and announcements about it in your news and updates feed, but you won't receive a notification when it releases. Wishlist data isn't public, but follows, for some reason, is.

Lord of Undead has a fairly impressive 2,649 follows right now, slightly more than Parry Survivor, which enjoys 2,062. Parry Survivor stars a school-uniformed anime character who must fend off waves of masked boys. It's from the creator of Kunkun League, Black Gunner Wukong and Evolve or Die, all of which have between 150 and 450 "very positive" reviews.

We have other games to look forward to as well: at least 30 more. Cute Country has 736 follows and is described on its Steam page as "super cute cure simulation operation single machine masterpiece" (I think it's basically a city builder with mobile game RPG elements). Then, with 123 follows is Phantom Vice Auto, which Chris Livingston has already written about.

Looking further afield, Man Simulator has a modest 9 follows. It's a "comedy simulator" where you get to be a slobbish middle-aged man: there's lawnmowing, fishing, hammering, wood chopping, barbequing, beer drinking, and it promises "meme-style presentation and humor".

And it wouldn't be a day on Steam, let alone GTA 6 launch day, without yet another first-person horror game. Flick is "a first-person body-cam horror game scientifically engineered to spike feelings of dread", which may help to alleviate our feelings of FOMO.

What else? Let's just list 'em shall we:

• Lord of Undead
• Parry Survivor
• Cute Country
• Phantom Vice Auto
• Flick
• Moba Team Manager
• Astro Industry Wars
• The Creator: Live Together
• Dig! Dig! Dino!
• Iona's Island
• Blyte
• Boom Rush: Desert OPS
• Core Logistics
• Sokobomb
• 树人：中国班主任
• Veil Breach: Raven County
• Neo Light
• Man Simulator
• Desert Island Time
• Utopium
• Cats and Pillos
• Anomaly Corp.
• Dungeon Cooking
• Divine Move
• Maximum Security Boyfriend
• G.E.M. Grab & Exit
• Sweet KOL (extremely NSFW!)
• Black Market Space Station Shop Simulator
• Crowns & Tiles
• Space Tenacity
• Ship Shape Slam!!!
• Pavel Repin's #tacticalunderground (DLC)

Curiously, there are actually more games releasing on November 19 than the day before and after (six on the 18th and 12 on the 20th). The same is true the Thursday before (27) and the Thursday after (5).

Will major publishers release anything close to GTA 6? And I'm talking, through the entirety of November? So far, according to our list of upcoming 2026 PC games, not really, though Devolver keeps promising it will.

Top Steam games by revenue (August 4 - 11)

Soulslike extraction RPG Mistfall Hunter disappeared from the top 10 after debuting in at number 3 last week (it ranked 12th, so almost).

Another interesting fact gleaned from just outside the top 10 is that Gears of War: E-Day came in at number 11, which is—as far as I can tell—the highest its reached since Steam pre-orders started on June 7. By contrast, Forza Horizon 6 hit number 4 on the revenue charts during the week pre-orders commenced.

I don't mean to seem like I'm ragging on Microsoft—I'm happy to do so for more important reasons—but Halo: Campaign Evolved has dropped pretty severely, coming in at 69 after enjoying 5th place last week. Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, by contrast, is dropping much more slowly.

It's neat to see Big Walk rank so highly, and it was overall a big week for niche Steam indies: Iron Nest is a heavy turret simulator and ReStory is about fixing old electronics.

Last week's Steam deep cuts

Steam review of the week

"EA didn't finish the game so I'm not finishing this revi"

Phantom, on the new Madden game, which is copping an absolute flogging by Steam users.

The Rideshare Stimulator AI fiasco almost, but not quite came to a close today when writer Stella Sacco shared that she had received a private message from Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch, who apologized for his hurtful comments to the press regarding her employment and capabilities.

In a separate post on LinkedIn, Karch reflected on the controversy and seemingly alluded to his personal contact with Sacco. But he also couldn't resist taking a swipe at Portal writer Chet Faliszek, who has publicly criticized Karch for his actions—most notably in the form of a 26-minute vlog on YouTube.

The briefest of recaps if you haven't been paying attention (bless you):

• Saber Interactive releases a trailer for Rideshare Stimulator, a mundane job sim where you play a cabbie.
• Writer Stella Sacco claims to have worked on the game before getting fired, her workload then taken over by an LLM.
• Saber's official statement on the matter admitted to AI use in Rideshare Stimulator, but denied that any writers were replaced wholesale by AI tools.
• Saber CEO Matt Karch supplied his own statement to This Week in Video Games, belittling Sacco's competency, asserting that she was not replaced by an LLM, but also that "I would frankly in retrospect have been happy to replace her with AI."

Today, Sacco shared a post to Bluesky saying she had been messaged by Karch, and that "he apologized unreservedly for the way he spoke about me in the press." While Sacco noted that she and Karch remained opposed in their personal stances on the use of AI, she concluded that, "Apologies are simply in too short supply these days to spurn one when it's offered."

Great. Awesome. That'd have been a wonderful place to end things. But Karch also shared his own further statement on the matter to LinkedIn. Karch did not mention Sacco by name, but mostly reflected on his experience, particularly the negative consequences of responding to a feeling of personal insult with a public statement. Karch also noted that he is sticking to his guns when it comes to deploying generative AI in games.

"Resolve issues human-to-human," Karch wrote, seemingly alluding to the apology Sacco received from him. "Escalating disputes through media channels or public statements rarely solves anything. Real resolution happens through direct, personal connection. If you cross a line, own it directly with the person involved."

But Karch's fourth paragraph in the post threw us for a loop. "The digital ecosystem thrives on outrage and surface-level takes," Karch wrote. "Case in point: a 26-minute video essay from an unsuccessful writer dedicated entirely to analyzing a single sarcastic quote of mine and pretending he knew exactly who I am—which somehow concluded with personal remarks about my physical anatomy and encouragement to accost me.

"When 'industry analysis' devolves into personal insults and threats, it says far more about the creator than it does about the subject. Relying on outrage algorithms for industry insights is a trap."

PC Gamer's top news hound, Andy Chalk, clocked that this could only be referring to an August 14 video shared by Chet Faliszek, a veteran writer whose credits include Portal, Left 4 Dead, and the Half-Life Episodes. The video in question, "Who is the CEO of Saber Interactive?" is 26 minutes and 13 seconds long, and Faliszek repeatedly states that Karch's behavior is compensating for something. Faliszek also says to viewers that, if they encountered Karch at an industry event, they should "make fun of him."

To be fair to Karch: Faliszek does repeatedly mock and insult him over the course of the video, going so far as to extrapolate that he has a domineering character, and that his actions are, at least in part, meant to discipline and control employees at Saber. I can see a certain tit-for-tat fairness to getting back at the person who said that.

But also: Faliszek's primary argument in the video is that, separate from Karch's personal character or the ethics of Sacco's original treatment, Karch's statement to This Week in Video Games was a completely avoidable PR and marketing catastrophe that worsened the controversy.

Karch's own conclusion in the same LinkedIn post where he took a jab at Faliszek was that he should have not said anything and left it to the communication team. At the time of writing, Faliszek's video is coming up on 4,000 views⁠—small potatoes.

Karch ignored Faliszek's and his own advice and escalated again⁠—right as things were calming down⁠—by providing so much identifying information about Faliszek's video. He effectively expanded the story to "Saber CEO vs. Portal writer" in a way I am now professionally obligated to make note of.

While I have my issues with the Steam Machine (mostly surrounding its price tag), I really do love the way it looks. It's a classy device, particularly as you can swap out the magnetic faceplates to your taste. I've seen some fairly tasteful designs so far, but none more OTT than this marble version from redditor GinoWT.

The marble used is supposedly from the Carrara quarry basin, which is the one Michelangelo worked from. I know absolutely nothing about marble, but some searching suggests that the old master did indeed use marble from this region.

As for this stuff specifically? Yeah, I'll take a hard pinch of salt with that one. It all looks the same to me—but I am, of course, a classless heathen of the lowest regard. Anyway, GinoWT says they usually cut marble for superyacht materials, so they've got the workshop setup to make square plates of the stuff .

It seems to be more involved than you might think, though, as each needs to be individually finished by hand. "Nobody is scaling this," says GinoWT. I'll take your word for it.

The stone itself is five to six millimetres thick, and bonded onto a 3D-printed structure with magnets to hold it to the front of the Steam Machine. This is apparently the same principle used on superyachts, to keep the weight "sensible" and to prevent the stone from cracking. We really are learning things today, aren't we?

It's not just marble that GinoWT specialises in, either. They've also made a "Sahara Noir" version in black with a gold vein going across it, and another out of Roman travertine. Yes, I had to look that one up as well.

If you're of a classier (and presumably wealthier) disposition than I, GinoWT has a website where you can sign up for one of the first small batches. No mention is made of actual prices beyond the "wait and see" form, so I'm willing to bet they'll be fairly expensive. Still, at what price Michelangelo's supposed leftovers, ey?

I love my Steam Deck. Although the internals are starting to look a bit long in the tooth these days, it still feels like the archetype of what a handheld gaming PC should be. It's a bit large and in charge though, which is why my ears pricked up when I heard of the Steam Boy.

This custom Steam Deck re-imagining is the work of Reddit user PhyFawkes, and the thinking behind it amounts to this: "The Steam Deck motherboard seems pretty small. I wonder if you could make a Steam Deck the size of a Game Boy?"

Turns out, for the most part, you can (via Tom's Hardware). The chassis amounts to a 3D-printed PETG shell, which manages to squeeze in not just the Steam Deck's relatively miniature mobo (complete with APU heatsink and fans), but also its rather sizable battery.

PhyFawkes has also tucked the Deck's internal speakers within the frame, alongside the separate audio board and some creative placement of ribbon cables. All this hardware hasn't left a whole lot of room for controls, though, which have been reduced to a D-pad, four traditional face buttons (alongside two system buttons), one thumbstick, and one touchpad.

That's some pretty tidy work, though—especially when you see the Steam Boy next to an original Steam Deck. In terms of footprint, it's well under half the size. The hardware is stacked, Tetris-style, within the frame, so it's a fair bit chonkier.

Still, you could reasonably fit one in a large jacket pocket, which is more than you can say for the original Deck.

There is one slight drawback, though. PhyFawkes hasn't yet been able to hook up the screen, which is a suitably sized 1200 x 1080 90 Hz OLED panel in traditional Game Boy config. It's going to require an adapter board between the motherboard output and the display, plus a BIOS mod as well by the looks of things, so that's the next task to be ticked off.

PhyFawkes also says that triggers are on the checklist. At least one of them, anyway, which is apparently in a good spot on the board in terms of being mounted somewhere usable on the outside.

So watch this space, as the Steam Boy is definitely a project to keep an eye on. Alongside all the Steam Machine mods we've been covering recently, like this water cooling project, or this RX 9070 XT eGPU setup. There's something about Valve's hardware that makes y'all want to tear it apart, huh?

The RX 9070 XT is one of our favourite graphics cards of this generation, as it delivers a hefty whack of gaming performance that can sometimes edge it ahead of the RTX 5070 Ti. As for the Steam Machine... well, I reviewed it and I'd like it a lot more if it was cheaper, put it that way. Or if it was more powerful.

One redditor may have solved the Steam Machine's performance drawbacks by putting the two bits of AMD-powered hardware together. Large_Customer_3840 has hooked the big AMD graphics card in to a Steam Machine as an eGPU, via some clever use of adapters.

"I did this by using the NVMe slot with an NVMe to Oculink adapter" say the redditor, "and then had the NVMe drive on a USB-C NVMe adapter to boot SteamOS."

Apparently, this setup works surprisingly well. "When I turned it on, the 9070 XT became the primary monitor and worked straight away," says our intrepid tinkerer. It's always a good feeling, isn't it?

The only issue to date has been a black screen problem, which revealed the Steam Machine needed to be connected to a TV for the eGPU to work. Other than that? It looks to be plain sailing.

Large_Customer_3840 says they've only tested the performance with Crimson Desert so far, but reports that the Steam Machine/AMD GPU hybrid gets over 100 fps on High. The setup looks to require the removal of the Steam Machine backplate, although the redditor says it could become a permanent upgrade with some modification of the case.

Perhaps some water cooling might be in order, just to put the cherry on the cake? It feels like we're gradually putting together the Franken-Steam Machine over here, and I can't wait to see what the modding community does next.

Another week, another hint that the Steam Frame might be close to launch, though this time the hint comes not from leaks and rumours but directly from Valve. According to recent official update notes, SteamOS Beta and Preview channels are to receive "preliminary support for the Steam Frame Wireless Adapter."

The Steam Frame is Valve's upcoming standalone VR headset, and based on what we've seen of it—my colleague Jacob Ridley having tried it last year at Valve HQ—it's definitely worth looking out for if you've a penchant for VR. Though the global memory shortage is of course a looming threat for the LPDDR5-laden device.

We'd previously seen a bunch of things that indicate an approaching launch date. Valve itself had previously indicated a launch of summer 2026, and over the past couple of months we've seen signs of Steam Frame imports, a 'Great on Frame' Steam classification, and the public availability of Frame-relevant software on Steam.

All this has had prospective Frame owners chomping at the proverbial bit for a bite of the upcoming VR headset. So much so that the Steam Frame subreddit recently seemed to lose its collective mind in anticipation, even sharing hopeful potatoes of luck (yes, you read that right).

Despite this hopeful anticipation, initial responses to the new SteamOS update note were somewhat pessimistic, given support for the Frame's wireless adapter is only just now being added—"preliminary" support, at that—and not even in the main SteamOS branch but the beta one.

However, one Redditor points out that the change in question simply adds "support for the dongle to wake Steam Machines from sleep", not support for the adapter in general. The implication being that such general support was already there.

Debates, of course, ensue. Primarily over whether Valve is waiting perhaps for an updated Half-Life Alyx (with foveated rendering) to be finished before the Frame launches.

Wherever you stand on the topic—whether you think the lucky potatoes have worked their magic or not—the Frame is no doubt that little bit closer to being ready for launch (or at least a more bug-free and feature-full launch) than it was before. Your guess is as good as mine for when that will actually be, though.

Earlier this morning, Valve began contacting customers who have purchased Steam hardware in Europe to notify them that one of its regional shipping partners, CEVA Logistics, was the subject of a recent cyberattack that "likely" exposed their personal information.

In its email—shared by notified users on Reddit and elsewhere—Valve said the attack took place sometime between July 29 and August 1, 2026. The company explained that the attackers targeted "specific delivery-related information" that Valve provides to CEVA Logistics in order to fulfill hardware orders for European customers, which the France-headquartered shipping company retains "for up to 90 days after that order."

In a statement emailed to PC Gamer, Valve confirmed that it first learned of the attack on August 7.

"Over the weekend more details came through that allowed us to assemble a list of customers that we see at risk of having been affected," Valve told PC Gamer. "Though CEVA is still investigating the attack, we wanted to at least send out messaging to all customers we can assume were affected based on what we currently know."

Valve says the name, street addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and order details of European customers whose orders were fulfilled by CEVA Logistics "may have been compromised."

The company warns that affected users should be vigilant about fraudulent messages masquerading as Valve or a delivery company, and that those attempts might use compromised information to seem genuine. However, Valve says users shouldn't need to change their passwords, and because its shipping partners aren't provided with any customer payment information or other non-delivery details, any unrelated Steam account information should still be secure.

According to FreightWaves reporting, eight CEVA warehouse hubs were affected by the cyberattack, causing shipping delays across Europe for its retail partners.

It's unclear how many users in total have been affected by the breach: Valve itself is still working to get all the details of the cyberattack, as it says it's "pressing CEVA for the full scope of what was taken and how" while it works with data protection authorities in respective European countries. In a statement given to TechCrunch, CEVA says its "thorough investigation" of the incident is still ongoing.

Although I criticised the Steam Machine for its hefty price tag upon release, part of me hoped the creator community might do something interesting with it. Lo and behold, we now have the first example of a water-cooled version—and I can't help but be impressed.

The Not-so-steamy Machine (as I shall call it) is the work of Stefan Warecka, who claim's it's the "world's first" example. They've posted a short video on Reddit summarising some of the build process, which begins with... attacking the Steam Machine's carboard box with an angle grinder. Good lord.

Despite the "hack first and ask questions later" approach, the end product is a rather beautiful Steam Machine with a fan-cooled radiator strapped to the back, a custom CNC-ed water block, and lots of external tubing—which is then duly filled with a neon-pink liquid solution. It looks like a mini PC that's spent a long night on the Pepto-Bismol. We've all been there, folks.

Warecka says that APU temps have dropped by 20-30 degrees, and a full video is coming soon to their YouTube channel. In the meantime, we can only guess at the potential performance benefits. Cyberpunk 2077 is shown running in the background, so hopefully some benchmarks are on their way.

I'm also struggling to wrap my head around the concept. The standard Steam Machine runs cool and quiet with a clever air cooling design, while the neat form factor means you can tuck it easily under your TV. This one? Not so much.

Still, I suppose it doesn't matter. This project seems to be focused on the fun of hacking one up for giggles, and that's a principle I can stand behind. Techmagnet says the next step is to open it up again and work on the VRM cooling, "which is quite challenging as the MOSFETs are super tiny… and also they run quite on the limits of thermal design which sucks."

Godspeed, you goggle-clad maestro of mayhem. Just put the angle grinder away, would you? I know a few mechanics with missing fingers that might advise you against that sort of thing. Just a thought.

Valve is still beavering away at the internals of SteamOS, and the latest update notes for the 3.8.25 Beta release mention the addition of "initial gamepad support" for several non-Valve gaming handhelds. The mighty MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is on the list, as are two offerings from Ayaneo.

These are the Ayaneo Pocket S2, an Android-first, Snapdragon-powered device that launched in June of last year, and the Konkr Fit, a recently-launched Windows handheld released under one of Ayaeno's sub-brands.

The Fit comes in two AMD APU flavours, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 and the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. It's also got TMR joysticks and Hall effect triggers, which should hopefully benefit from the latest update.

Tucked away at the bottom of the "Non-Valve Devices" section is a note on updated gamepad support for the OneXPlayer Apex. You know, the one with an optional plug-in liquid cooling tower released back in the pre-memory crisis times, when ultra-high-end handhelds made a small modicum of sense.

Anyway, it seems Valve is working hard on SteamOS compatibility with the latest handheld releases—even if they're increasingly looking like some of the biggest victims of the RAMpocalypse so far.

Alongside gaming laptops, gaming PCs, consoles... all the things we like, basically.

Speaking of recently-released devices hit hard by the pricing stick, the update also includes new firmware for the Steam Machine, which is supposed to fix a couple of problems including "a rare issue where CPU performance could be degraded until reboot after waking up from sleep."

No software update is going to solve the consumer pricing problem in hardware right now, but it's pleasing to see Valve trucking on anyway. If you're planning on dropping some serious cash on a new handheld gaming PC sometime soon, it seems SteamOS is rapidly becoming ready for you. Even if your bank balance might not be, naturally.

Games about cleaning are all the rage. The recent success of House Flipper, Power Wash Simulator and Unpacking demonstrates there's a mainstream-sized appetite among PC gamers for making messy places neat and tidy.

But the micro-genre goes back way further than that. The 1982 arcade game Bubbles was about using a bubble to clean a filthy sink. Cosy foundational text Harvest Moon—like its descendant Stardew Valley—has you gradually transforming a forgotten ruin into a quaint and personalised space. Then there's stuff like Chibi-Robo and Katamari Damacy.

Not all cleaning games are cosy or sim-oriented. Viscera Cleanup Detail is about cleaning blood 'n' guts and The Gunk is a 3D platformer about eliminating space gunk in order to, I'm not sure, probably save the world. And the recent wave of retail simulators have lots of cleaning and sorting.

But the cleaning or tidying game has evolved once again. Its newest manifestation may clock as either a living nightmare or the height of blissful stimulation, depending on your temperament.

To demonstrate, here's the trailer for Toy Shop Tidy Up, which launched on August 7:

With all due respect to both the creators Shiftmoon and those enthusiastic about this new virtual-tidying frontier, this trailer gives me a panic attack. But it's far from the only recent PC game focused entirely on sorting through a massive pile of objects all the better to place them on shelves.

Toy Shop Tidy Up has only been a very modest success so far, but the Steam user reviews so far offer some insight into the appeal of this microgenre.

"Although it’s a relaxing game, it’s missing that satisfying feeling of placing every item exactly where it belongs," writes Sosich. Another user, Joker, agrees. "Great base game, but the one thing I wish it had, would be that the toys had their own spot to put them in, rather than just being able to place them anywhere in the area."

For a more demanding experience, these users have a number of games to choose from, all released in 2026. Cellar Keeper, also released on August 7, plonks the player in a wine cellar and tasks them with returning exactly 2,448 wine bottles to their "proper" shelf. In other words, critics of Toy Shop Tidy Up will be pleased, because every bottle must be sorted by their variety and stacked exactly where it belongs.

"Watching disorder disappear is its own reward," promises the store description.

Many user reviews of Cellar Keeper refer back to what is clearly considered the high watermark of this burgeoning orthodoxy: Released in April, Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library! has players inhabit a cosy oaken library strewn with 3,072 books. These must all go back on shelves, and in the right order. Among the key features of Librarian are listed "visual satisfaction" and "strategic efficiency".

Librarian is by far the most successful sorting game thus far: its peak all-time concurrent players figure is 29,469. Over 3,200 people are playing it as I write. It has over 17,000 "very positive" reviews.

Taking a more arch approach is Supermarket Chaos, which crash landed onto Steam on June 30. Thanks to an errant robot shelf-stacker with a sudden distaste for order, groceries have been left in a big messy pile on the floor. It is your job, of course, to put everything back where it belongs. This outing offers three maps, with the most challenging containing 9999 objects. Thankfully, online cooperative play is supported.

The most terrifying entry in this genre isn't out yet, but it does make me thirst for whisky: Never Sort By Color, which dares release in November, takes the same tack as all the previously listed games except you're sorting Lego in a room littered with 100,000 bricks. Thankfully you've got a grappling hook, a sieve tray and other tools to help.

And that's not all! Arriving next week is TV Archive: Tidy Up Together, which is the inevitable retro videostore take on the genre. Last week's Cleaning Up The Puzzle Gallery is about finding puzzle pieces in a whitewalled gallery space, all the better to re-apply them to art works. And also coming next week is Tidy Up Together. I think by now you get the idea.

And like the now-ubiquitous retail sims, sorting simulators are being turned out at a rapid pace to capitalise on the actual commercial success of Librarian. In August alone, and not including those listed above, all of these are listed as forthcoming: Sort Them Ducks, Shelve the Potions!, Shelves & Sorcery, Mall Tidy Up Together, Konbini Cleanup, Storehand, Old Market Restored, Tidy Mart, Game Shop Panic, Big Bad Pharma, Package Chaos and Megastore Tidy Up Together.

There are heaps more "scheduled" for September 2026 and "Q3" as well. Will all of these come out? I severely doubt it. But you're going to start seeing a lot more of these on Steam in the coming months.

Top Steam games by revenue (July 28 - August 4)

Steam releases its top sellers charts on Wednesdays, so the chart below doesn't account for the 1.0 launch of Fields of Mistria, the QuakeCon-themed Bethesda sale, or the recent surprise update and deep discount on Ghost Recon Wildlands.

Mistfall Hunter is inevitably quite high on the list, though we are in a major release slump. The Soulslike extraction RPG only has around 4,700 "mixed" reviews right now, though its player count is consistently much higher than that would normally imply. Its current 24-hour peak concurrents in 37,123 (the record is 44,472).

Studio Bellring Games wrote on August 7 that over a million players had signed in to Mistfall Hunter. That includes both PS5 and Xbox users. It's doing well but—and this still feels surprising to me—not as well as recent hits like Meccha Chameleon.

Three games on the list are there because of major sales: Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3 and Spider-Man 2.

Last week's Steam deep cuts

Steam review of the week

"Worst game I have ever played. I got this game in a random Steam key bundle for about €5 along with five other games because it was on sale, and I still regret buying it. I think I would enjoy being electrocuted more."

Qube37, on the joys of electrocution compared to the drudgery that is Cyberpunk SFX.

What counts as cyberpunk anyway? Easy, it's whatever games are currently tagged as "cyberpunk" on Steam and therefore part of the Steam Cyberpunk Fest, a sale running until 10 am on August 10 with the baffling tagline: "They say never look back. Cyberpunk says ALWAYS be in the future. Think about it."

Whatever that means, what's important is the discounts that will help us fill our backlog with even more games about cyborgs and hackers and sticking it to the man. Here are some of the highlights.

• Slow-mo brawling with a bossy hacker lady who grades you, Ruiner: 90% off, $1.99
• Immersive sim about ex-spy on the run off the grid, Neon Struct: 90% off, $1.79
• Action RPG where you cross lovingly detailed arcology, The Ascent: 75% off, $7.49
• Baffling vomitcore corpo assassin simulator Cruelty Squad: 90% off, $1.99
• Best cyberpunk story this side of Snow Crash chapter 1, The Red Strings Club: 80% off, $2.99
• Recruit a ghoul samurai and convince people he's a movie star, Shadowrun Hong Kong: 75% off, $4.99
• Turn-based stealth is a good idea actually in Invisible, Inc: 75% off, $4.99
• Historic low price for Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade: 65% off, $13.99
• If ya basic, Cyberpunk 2077: 70% off, $17.99

There are plenty of other bargains in the list if you want to dig down the Steam page, and if you still don't own the original Deus Ex that's half-price while Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Director's Cut is 85% off.

Steam's got a couple more sales planned for this month, with a Pins & Pegs Fest running from August 17–20 that will be all about "Games involving pins (pinball, bowling) and pegs (pachinko, bagatelle)" followed by the somewhat less niche-sounding PvE Survival Crafting Fest from August 31–September 7.

Despite Valve warning them that matches will be "very rocky" to start, Deadlock players are struggling to adjust to the MOBA's new ranked mode.

Late last week, Deadlock finally got a proper ranked mode, replacing the rudimentary version that existed for the last couple of years. Valve reworked the matchmaking system behind it, added a bunch of rules for how you climb the ranks, and created a new standard mode for casual play.

Valve warned players that "the next week or so" would be turbulent as everyone settles into their correct ranks, but it seems like people weren't ready for how severe it would actually be. The Deadlock subreddit, as well as my YouTube feed, has been full of people discussing whether or not the new update was a miss.

Some of the criticisms don't surprise me: Players are discovering what it's like to be forced to play a casual mode while they tally up enough wins to play ranked. Valve decided that you need 15 wins on a hero to play them in ranked, which is, by many accounts, a Sisyphean effort in the chaos of the standard mode. It's even worse for all the people who spent their Deadlock careers maining a single hero and are only now trying to branch out.

Players cannot fathom why nobody is shotcalling over voice chat or playing like experts in a mode made to be a casual alternative to ranked. While my experiences in Overwatch make me sympathize with them a little, it also sounds like what you'd expect from playing an invite-only game that isn't finished yet. Not everyone cares about optimizing their strategies like their life is on the line and the small pool of players means the match quality will waver more than it does in bigger games.

Maybe the requirement for ranked is too high, but you have to draw the line somewhere so it feels like a place for people who take the game somewhat seriously. It also doesn't help that ranked players who were previously in the highest tier are finishing their placement matches three or four levels lower. This has made even ranked matches inconsistent, according to the people who have been in the mines for the last few days.

Like other games, Deadlock tracks your progress to the next rank through a points system and the numbers can fluctuate based on the skill level distribution of the players in a match. You can completely stomp a team and come out of it with almost no progress, for example. This has confused a lot of players as they struggle to reach the same rank they had before.

Given how much Valve has changed in the update, I suspect we might be seeing the result of a ranked system in the middle of recalibrating what each rank represents in the first place. It's very possible that a high-ranked Eternus player who only played Mina before is now only an Oracle player when forced to flex to other heroes or when put on teams with a wider spread of skill levels (potentially due to the fractured player based across modes now)."People need to remove their expectations and just enjoy the game," wrote one Reddit user. "If they can't enjoy it because of their rank then that's their problem not a problem with the game."

All I know is that matchmaking systems are extremely complex and extremely delicate. Small changes can feel huge to certain sections of players. Deadlock is a game with a lot of barriers to entry that is probably exacerbating the frustrations that normally come with any kind of rank reset. So far, Valve hasn't made any drastic changes, but I'll be curious to see how things shake out in the next month or so.

Last week, Valve finally fixed a longstanding issue with users not being able to access local network game transfers, and all was right with the world. Well, not really, as it has now fixed even more problems causing that issue. But this time, it might be done… hopefully.

In a discussion board announcing a Steam Client Update on August 3, Valve said it has "fixed additional cases preventing local network game transfers from starting."

It doesn't say what exactly those problems are, but one can assume they were reported after the local game transfer fix last week. If you're wondering why people care about this issue, local transfers are a way of bypassing using the internet to transfer games.

For a long time, users would attempt to transfer game files, but only be greeted with the option to download it via Steam itself. If your bandwidth isn't very good or you are operating on limited data, this could be a problem. That's especially true for 100 GB+ games that could take hours over the internet.

So now, as long as your Steam Client is updated to the latest stable channel, you should be able to transfer games locally without a problem. Provided you have another system with them already installed and waiting to be transferred, of course. Luckily, to actually get onto the latest version of Steam, you don't have to do anything. It should install and update all by itself.

As well as fixing the local network game transfer problem, the latest Steam Client update has also fixed a problem where Steam asked players to choose a user on startup even if it wasn't requested. It's a fairly light update but, if it actually fixes the local network woes, a pretty good one all the same.

I haven't yet seen any reports of local network game transfers not working after the release of the update, which is a good sign, and one commenter even claims it fixes their issues on GNU/Linux. If you happen to have multiple rigs, or even both a home rig and a Steam Machine plugged into your TV, I could see this being a great way to get around bandwidth problems and get your games a little quicker, too.

Valve's wireless VR headset, the Steam Frame, doesn't yet have a nailed down release date beyond the vague window of 'later this year'. I've got a hunch it'll drop soon though—and not because I put any stock in the Steam Frame subreddit's wild release date rituals. No, I'm instead feeling optimistic because both Lepton and FEX are now publicly available via Steam.

Both of these pieces of software are key for the Steam Frame and required for its operation. Lepton can be thought of as a 'container' for gaming on Linux that lets it run Android games inside of it. FEX is a similarly important tool for the Snapdragon-powered device, but a smidge more complicated.

At the risk of oversimplifying, FEX takes 32-bit and 64-bit x86 games and translates them so they can be understood by Arm-based systems. The Steam Frame uses an Arm-based Snapdragon SoC, hence why FEX is required. Without it, it wouldn't be able to play most of the VR games available on Steam.

To be clear, neither Lepton nor FEX have an easily accessible Steam store page. This 'public release' is mostly good news for developers. For instance, Android devs can easily create an Android depot containing an apk for their game on Steam (the first Android game to be purchasable on Steam popped up back in November, in the form of an apk file for Walkabout Mini Golf).

From there, devs can set the apk as the launch executable for players using the Steam client. Steam Cloud will even support save data stored in the external Android data directory—that's some thought out integration.

FEX could be handy for any Arm system. Besides Valve saying it's 'definitely' already investigating an Arm-based gaming future, Nvidia's recently unveiled RTX Spark 'superchip' pairs an Nvidia GPU core with a MediaTek Arm chiplet.

Though I personally doubt an RTX Spark laptop or notebook will be the most affordable option, the SoC seems set to be a disruptive presence in the space no matter what. Our Dave has already played a native Arm build of Alan Wake 2 on an RTX Spark laptop, but that still leaves plenty of games that will benefit from Valve's work on the FEX translation layer in the future.

If you've ever felt like your bike trainer has a disturbing lack of Rocket League or Forza Horizon, you are in luck. One app called Deck de France can let you use your bike as a controller for games, though it's pretty limited so far.

Shared on GitHub (via Hackaday), Deck de France is technically compatible with any smart trainer that broadcasts Cycling Power Service over Bluetooth Low Energy. That means it can work with the following devices:

• Tacx — NEO, NEO 2T, Flux, Bushido, Vortex, Satori, Booster
• Elite — Suito-T, Justo, Direto, Drivo, Rampa, Sterzo Smart (steering plate)
• Wahoo — KICKR, KICKR Core (broadcasts CPS — untested but should work)
• Zwift Hub / Zwift Hub One (broadcasts CPS — untested but should work)
• CycleOps — Magnus, H3 (broadcasts CPS — untested but should work)
• Garmin — Vector 3 power meter pedals
• Magene — S3+ Speed/Cadence sensor
• Power meters — Any BLE power meter pedals or crank-based meters (4iiii, Stages, Favero, etc.)

Effectively, the app can translate your pedalling power into actions. Sukolupo, the creator of the app, says the original use case is the Tour de France games. The harder you pedal, the faster you go.

That makes sense as it's the closest video game to actually cycling without actually cycling, which has always been a bit of an oddity to me—especially when cycling apps such as Zwift and Rouvy exist.

It also has some rudimentary functionality in other games. In Rocket League, pedalling activates boost. In the Forza games, pedal power is equivalent to acceleration. You can even control the throttle of cars in Grand Theft Auto.

The catch here is that you need a Bluetooth controller to do everything else. That means in the likes of Rocket League, you'd play as normal on a controller and pedal when you want to boost.

As of right now, it is shown working with the Steam Deck, but Deck de France technically works with any Linux PC. It actually seems strikingly simple to set up, with Sukolupo saying you can get it working in just five minutes. The instructions are all on the Deck de France GitHub repository and easy to follow.

So, if you're an avid cycler, or just want the weirdest way to hog all the boost in Rocket League, this seems like a fun way to add a little bit of exercise into a gaming session.

Last week PC Gamer's Andy Edser highlighted an article tracing a seeming massive drop in Steam Deck sales. I'm not entirely convinced by the maths involved—which was conducted by Boiling Steam—but whether the numbers are accurate or not, it does capture some of the anxiety around Valve's hardware and what kind of future it might have.

When Gabe Newell donated a smidge over $20 million to OpenAI back in 2018, he probably didn't anticipate that the industry arising from its tech would put a huge dampener on his company's future hardware plans. The Steam Deck OLED copped a dramatic price increase in May, with the 1TB model rising from $649 to $949 and the 512GB going from $549 to $789.

"These new prices reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole," Valve wrote at the time, alluding to the way AI datacentres are gobbling up the bulk of components needed for most of the hardware used to play videogames. In one fell swoop, the Steam Deck OLED—which turns three in November—morphed from a great entry level solution for budding PC gamers, into something only wealthy people can afford.

When Valve released that statement in May we didn't yet know how much the Steam Machine would cost, but anyone who hoped they might somehow hack the components crisis to ship an actually-affordable living room PC were, unfortunately, dreaming. As we now know, the Steam Machine is expensive and anyway, in extremely short supply.

As Andy Edser wrote in June just after publishing his 62 / 100 review of the box, the Steam Machine is "the biggest victim of the RAMpocalypse to date". What was predicted to cost around $600 in November 2025 comes bearing a minimum $1,049 price tag. I was with utmost certainty going to buy one if the price was closer to the former. But at the current going rate, there's just no way, and I'm sure there are droves who are in my position.

So I guess it's not surprising that the Steam Machine's "launch"—which was more of a waitlist launch—has been a bit muted. Even Valve's own compatibility module hasn't been updated to reflect the Steam Machine's existence: to see if something is compatible with the device you have to click on the Steam Deck Compatibility box, which then shows a nested result for the Steam Machine. That's the case in both desktop and Big Picture modes.

Browsing Steam, most of the time you wouldn't know the Steam Machine exists. Devs aren't talking about their games being compatible with Steam Machine either, like they increasingly do the Steam Deck. External forces seem to have demolished the viability of these things. It's sad, but true.

And yet! The Steam Deck consistently appears in Valve's list of Steam's top products by revenue: last week it hit 14, and the week before that, 9. That result is influenced by the fact that Steam Deck is much more expensive than your average game, but it still proves that people are buying them.

But I had hoped the Steam Deck and Steam Machine might mark a rapid shift in how PC gaming is perceived. Gaming on a PC is immeasurably easier in 2026 than it was even in 2016, but consoles are still considered the easier route by millions of people. With the Steam Machine and Steam Deck, Valve had a chance to prove everyone wrong.

From the vantage point of November 2025 the timing seemed immaculate, given the existential crises facing both Xbox and PlayStation. It's amazing how much difference three months makes. Steam Machine having any longterm effect on the industry seems hugely unlikely right now.

Top Steam games by revenue (July 21 - July 28)

Steam releases its top sellers charts on Wednesdays, so the chart below doesn't account for the sudden popularity of Mistfall Hunter, which released on Thursday. The "dark fantasy extraction ARPG" is currently third on the live concurrents list.

Counter-Strike 2 holds tight to number one despite the release of a new (albeit actually old) Halo game and the 1.0 launch of Palworld.

DragonSword: Awakening is basically a non-gacha take on Genshin Impact, so its popularity is to be expected. Shift at Midnight is yet another one of those indies that blends retail sim trappings with horror, though this time with online cooperative play.

And while Meccha Chameleon is far from "a dead game" (it appears at 13 this week) last week was the first time it didn't appear in the top ten since launch.

Last week's Steam deep cuts

Steam review of the week

"I now understand why people push people in front of trains. It's super funny."

Alien Kink VR, taking the wrong learnings from Machine Party.

First reported by Automaton, Spanking Exorcist developer Actor made a free "apology game" available to download after missing a planned July 24 release date due to overzealous Steam content moderation. In the simple apology game, you press a button to simulate spanking the developer as punishment.

Spanking Exorcist's trailer shows a game combining first person exploration, unsettling, sex doll-looking lady characters, and slightly less scary, Sadako-looking forsaken waif lady characters. It strikes me as a perfectly adequate, replacement-level gag horror game for streamers to react to, if a bit more risque than your usual fare.

"I consent," you say. "I consent," announces the anonymous Japanese developer, Actor. "Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?" asserts Valve. The uneven content moderation on Steam became a big story following controversial intervention by payment processors and the persecution of horror game Horses, but it's always been odd.

I'm fond of the theory that there's just one particularly zealous prude at Valve who really has it out for horny stuff from Japan. Anyway, you can still buy Furry Hitler (one and two), as well as Alex Jones' shitty videogame on Steam.

I was pleased to discover that Plantation Simulator was taken down (by its developer's request, not Valve's intercession) following negative reporting by Kotaku. Spanking Exorcist is fine by comparison. Harmless. Let my boy spank.

"We sincerely apologize for the delay in the release of Spanking Exorcist on this occasion," Actor wrote on X, "The Everything App" (auto-translated from Japanese). "As a token of our remorse, we've created a game where you can spank the butt of the developer, Actor … We would be delighted if you enjoy it."

In the interest of journalistic integrity, I followed the Google Drive download link and procured Apology.exe to try it out for myself, ignoring the protests of Google Drive and Windows. Computer, disable safeties, activate indie Japanese gag spanking game. Yes, I know the risks (I'm currently running a system scan as I write this).

There is not much to Apology.exe, just a cartoonish representation of a derriere viewed from overhead and surrounded by Japanese text. There's a link to Spanking Exorcist's Steam page, a button to quit out, and a button to make the butt jiggle in tune with a slapping sound effect. It is the slightest of droll diversions you could sample in this beautiful life, but I appreciate the bit.

And the story gets a happy(?) ending too. I'm thrilled to report that Spanking Exorcist proper is available for download on Steam, having released just six days after its initial target date. It's six bucks usually, $5.39 on a launch sale, and I'm probably not gonna get it.

After much anticipation, Valve has finally given Deadlock a proper ranked mode, and with it comes a major overhaul to how the game balances each match—a substantial enough change that might make playing it a little chaotic for the next few weeks.

Before today's update, Deadlock's ranked mode was pretty straightforward as it was the only standard way to play it (as opposed to the over-the-top Brawl mode). You picked your favorite heroes, queued up, and climbed up the ranks.

The basic structure remains the same in the new system, but there are a lot more rules in place to help keep the quality of matches more balanced than before—which is something that started to become a problem as the game's popularity has fluctuated.

First of all, the new ranked mode isn't the only way to play a normal match now. Standard mode is for anyone who wants to practice or avoid the stress of ranked. It's also where you'll need to earn the right to queue up for ranked by winning 15 matches on at least three heroes.

Once you qualify for ranked, you can queue up to see how the system thinks you measure up against other players. The old ranks have been thrown out for 11 new ones, each with subranks to work through before you've earned a promotion. Every match will update you on your progress toward the next rank up until you reach the highest echelons where the thresholds you have to meet will change daily due to the relatively small number of players up there.

Valve says the new matchmaking system underneath all of this will do its best to create balanced matches while also letting you play your desired hero. It won't always work out perfectly, which is why it's also introduced a way to swap heroes before the match begins.

The new ranked mode is available to play now, but Valve warns players that they should "expect the next week or so to be very rocky as the ranked matchmaking pool will start off very thin with most players not having the unlock requirements done yet." Queue times will be longer and match quality might take a nosedive as the system works itself out. "Given the large rewrite involved with this update, we are also expecting that it will take a couple of days to iron out bugs," it added.

This is another big step toward the presumed, eventual launch of an open beta for Valve's not-so-secret MOBA. The last few major updates have started to polish parts of the game that have been stagnant for quite some time. Some things are still being reworked on a weekly basis, but it's starting to feel like this thing might be ready to go public instead of invite-only soon.

In a new update on Steam Machine sales, Valve says it's "fulfilling orders on a daily basis," and that it expects that everyone currently in the reservation queue will have an opportunity to purchase the machine they've been waiting for—by, uh, the end of the year.

Announced in June, Valve's system for determining who gets first crack at a Steam Machine was essentially a lottery. Signups were taken until June 25, after which all entries were randomized into a reservation order: Those near the top of the list were added to the reservation queue and would have a Steam Machine reserved for them, while everyone else was put on a waitlist, where they'd linger until more stock became available.

"With each reservation queue and corresponding waitlist being per-product, per-region, they can move at different speeds based on demand," Valve explained in the latest update. "This means for some products in some regions, we've reached the end of the reservation queue and have started inviting folks from the waitlist."

Valve also noted that this does not mean anyone on the waitlist will leapfrog people who already have a reservation: "We're only dipping into waitlists if and when we reach the end of the reservation queue for that product and region."

Being moved into the reservation queue is actually the penultimate step in the process—once you receive the email notifying you of your ascended status, you've got three days to pull the trigger and actually buy the thing, or your reservation will go to someone else. So it's not necessarily that everyone will have their Steam Deck by the end of 2026, just that emails enabling purchases should be sent out by then. As Valve explained:

"If you have a reservation, you can expect an email offering you the chance to purchase by the end of the year. If you have a spot on one of the waitlists, there is a chance you could be moved into reservations depending on which product you're on the list for; in those instances we will email you about your new reservation status first, with a purchase email to follow once your spot in that queue comes up."

So it's good news to the extent that yes, they're coming, but not great news because, y'know, it's July. There's still a lot of 2026 left, and that means at least some of you eager Steam Machine beavers out there are in for long waits ahead before you can actually get your hands on your hot (well, warm) new rig. Here's to 2027, I guess?

Over on the Steam Frame subreddit, the top post at the time of writing is one declaring "this sub has lost its mind". It follows this up by acknowledging that, with Valve not releasing Steam Frame preorders on July 27th as the subreddit previously thought, "Now most of the new posts are just brainrot, and I'm here for it."

To take a step back a bit, users have suspected the Steam Frame, Valve's upcoming VR headset, is 'coming soon' for a good while now. Valve confirmed it will release this summer at some point, and with summer in full swing, it's likely to come out sooner rather than later. As well as this, we recently saw a new "Great on Frame" category on the Steam store, and tens of thousands of kilograms of VR headsets arrived in the US last month.

Some sleuths have noted that Valve tends to announce on Mondays or Thursdays and also noted that it would make sense to launch Steam Frame preorders in between Steam Fests so it isn't fighting for banner space on the Steam home page. That left them with the conclusion that Valve would announce preorders on July 9th or July 27th. Naturally, when it wasn't announced on July 9th, July 27th became the last hope for a July release. But the Steam Sale launch theory doesn't make much sense, as the Steam Controller was announced and released during a Steam Fest.

There was, however, one more anticipated release date in between. Last week, one X user reported on an unverified screenshot claiming that the Steam Frame rollout would begin on July 24. The Steam Frame subreddit was pretty sceptical of this claim, but it still became a point of conversation and hope for some.

Over the entirety of July, users have been posting prayers, pleas, and potatoes of luck (don't ask), in the hope that Valve would randomly announce the release date with little fanfare. As you might be able to guess, that hasn't happened. However, the months of anticipation have gotten to the subreddit, and now users are using that as a chance to post just whatever they feel like, including gibberish and a whole pile of memes.

The tomfoolery of the Steam Frame subreddit has made its way over to the main Steam subreddit, where one post asks, "What’s currently going on in r/steamframe." Yeah, I don't really know either, but it's fun to watch.

One comment says, "We've all collectively lost our minds. I sold my damn Quest 3 months ago for this thing, I'm jonesin' for some VR."

But there's a deeper meaning behind some of this anticipation. The Steam Machine launched at a very high price point, so high in fact that Valve told us it wished it could sell the Machine for less. And Qualcomm has said it is planning to raise the price of its chips on September 1 (The Frame uses a Qualcomm chip), so some are worried that the Frame will be prohibitively expensive, and that's before mentioning the 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM in it.

If it launches right now, it would be launching before the Qualcomm price raise comes into effect. Naturally, one can assume that Valve has a stockpile of headsets ready to go for launch, and presumably contracts of supply in place, though that wouldn't stop it from raising the price further down the line should it need to.

Many of those preordering a Steam Frame are preparing for the pain of that price, so they might as well get it out of the way early. And, obviously, the sooner the preorder, the sooner users will actually have their hands on the device.

But hey, maybe Valve will actually announce it today. It has no reason to do so, but that's never stopped anyone from hoping.

One saving grace of a flat mate is setting up 'family sharing' on each other's Steam libraries at the earliest opportunity. Another saving grace is leveraging local network game transfers to then have a go at whichever game has become your roommate's flavour of the month, and judging them accordingly.

Recently though, Steam's local network game transfers hadn't been working as intended. For instance, some folk would attempt to kick off a local transfer, only for Steam to download via the internet instead. That's less than ideal if your bandwidth is scarce or you're working with limited data. Thankfully, Valve shipped a fix to the stable channel of the Steam Client on Monday.

That means, you should now be able to transfer games between gaming desktops, laptops, and handhelds like the Steam Deck once more—so long as you've got the most up to date version of the Steam client installed. Stick with me, because I'll tell you how to check Steam is up to date on your PC and Steam Deck.

To check you're up to date on PC, open the client, click 'Steam' in the top left corner, and click 'Check for Steam Client Updates…' from the drop down menu. You may then need to restart the client to apply the update.

On Steam Deck, the settings cog at the top of the screen will usually display a bright yellow exclamation point to let you know you've got an update. You can also manually check for updates by clicking or tapping on the settings cog, or by pressing the device's physical 'Steam' button and selecting 'Settings' from there.

Once you're in the settings menu, you'll want to navigate to 'System' and check under 'Updates'. If there's a yellow exclamation point beside 'Software Updates,' you'll want to then tap 'apply' (if there isn't a yellow exclamation point already, you can simply tap 'Check for updates'). Once the update has been downloaded and applied, you'll need to restart your Steam Deck.

One more thing: Local Network Game Transfers may not work between devices rocking different versions of the Steam client, so you really will want to update everything when you can. Now that Valve has fixed the issue that was holding back the feature before, you can share whatever is already lurking on your SSD much more easily.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to give my flatmate a slide presentation on why they should play Cat Mail Co.—and immediately afterwards, they're going to give me a presentation on the virtues of finally finishing 007: First Light.

Have you ever been sick of your family using your electronics without asking, and thought 'boy, I should put spikes and a taser on this thing'? If the answer is yes, then you're like Redditor ConroyyJenkinss (presumably no relation to Leroy), who has done just that.

Taking to the Steam Deck subreddit, they recently announced "I Built a Security System for My Steam Deck", and it is one heck of a security system.

"I got sick of my family always draining my Steam Deck's battery and not recharging it", ConroyyJenkinss said, so they decided to 3D print a spiky case they made in Blender to snap onto the side of the device. That makes it tough to hold.

From there, they rigged up a Raspberry Pi with a speaker to an object detection camera, and wrote a Python script to "play a goofy audio clip" and set off a taser fitted to the top of the Deck after a few seconds. No, they don't say what the audio is. As far as I can tell, the taser is just there to scare would-be battery thieves, as it can't make contact from its perch above the Steam Deck.

You might be wondering why the Redditor didn't simply put a password on the Steam Deck and leave it at that. Jenkinss says, "This minimises the risk of them touching my Steam Deck at all, they are forced to ask for permission now."

Naturally, this defense mechanism isn't designed to actually serve its purpose. It's a goofy experiment that is done just to see if it can be done. Jenkinss even acknowledges in the comment section that disarming the taser and taking the spike case off is a hassle. I suppose there's more justification to keep the device safe, with it recently seeing a huge price increase.

One redditor in the comments section calls it "hostile architecture for gadgets", and now I'd love to see a tournament of the most abrasive and over-the-top defence mechanisms against the painful experience of having your family waste your battery life.

ConroyyJenkinss says it is "easily the dumbest thing I've ever built but it works, and nobody touches my Steam Deck anymore."

Yeah, I can see why.

The flood of retail simulators on Steam is nothing new: the trend seemed to land with torrential force in late 2024. But it's fascinating, to me at least, how many of these things are still being released every week, and how many of them seem to actually reach an audience despite their rudimentary appearance.

Last week, 14 retail sims were released on Steam. I'm being pretty picky with what I class a "retail sim" too. If it's an idle game with a retail or service industry theme, it's not included. If it's a horror game with a retail setting—and there are tons of these, including this week's Shift at Midnight—they're not included either. If it's a puzzle game with retail or service industry themes, like Nothing To Declare, I'm not including it.

No, I'm talking about those unfailingly first-person retail sims that extremely prolific Polish publisher PlayWay seemed to spawn into existence, and which have been copied relentlessly since (including by PlayWay itself). You probably know what I'm talking about: you unpack boxes, operate checkouts, purchase and receive stock. They all kinda look the same. Many are seemingly set on the same eerily quiet street. There is ostensibly a strategic "tycoon" element to most of them, but their focus on menial activities is part of their unusual appeal.

Here's what released last week, with the record concurrent player number listed for each game, just to get a vague sense of how popular it's been.

Of those, Boba Cafe Simulator is overwhelmingly the most popular with over 754 "overwhelmingly positive" reviews. Few professional reviews of Boba Cafe Simulator exist, though I can confirm a PR company has been distributing code. While reviews are scarce, plenty of streamers and YouTubers have played it, and the free demo launched in September has been marginally popular.

Meanwhile, Bookshop Simulator, which launched into 1.0 last week after a stint in early access, definitely looks like the most distinctive of the batch: it has a slightly more stylised presentation compared to the others. It also benefits from not having AI-generated capsule art, which is rife in this genre.

The only other entry to break the 1,000 concurrents mark was Mall Together, whose appeal seems to be the prospect of building a whole mall rather than a single outlet. It's the only "successful" shop sim from last week to bear an AI disclosure (for capsule art, of course).

What do all three of these more successful sims share at a glance? Not a great deal, aside from support for online cooperative play. I don't think that's necessarily the golden ticket: TCG Card Shop Simulator, which is probably among the most popular retail sims on Steam, is singleplayer only, as is Retro Rewind - Video Store Simulator.

If you feel like these things are being doled at on an industrial scale you're on the right track. Two of the retail sims released last week—Model Kit Shop Simulator and Wild West Miner Simulator: First Gun—were published by the aforementioned PlayWay, which published four games between July 20 and now.

PlayWay is a curious beast. According to SteamDB the publisher has 474 products on Steam, but well over 100 of those haven't been released yet: there's lots of TBAs and Soons among the Q1 2027s and vague 2026s. Some of these yet-to-release games don't seem likely to ever materialise. I mean, unless Train Mechanic Simulator 2025 gets a name change.

This could actually be a tactic, according to industry analyst Simon Carless in his great GameDiscoverCo newsletter. In a 2021 post he theorised that PlayWay announces loads of games but only bothers to actually make them if they amass enough wishlists. Wishlists aren't public, so it's hard to tell which of PlayWay's "announced" games have a high chance of actually releasing, but Low-Budget Repairs and Car Mechanic Simulator 2026 are both listed among Steam's most wishlisted, so you can probably count on those. PlayWay has announced that the former has passed a million wishlists.

According to Carless, "there is a centralized ideas machine at PlayWay and associated companies. It generates, vets and commissions a large amount of ideas for games, and then works with newer Polish game devs to put them into action."

I think that's what most people would call shovelware, and there's no doubt the majority of the retail sims on Steam are exactly that. But PlayWay does release decent, effortful games like House Flipper 2, Mr Prepper and the Thief Simulator games, and of course, they're far from the only publisher trading in rapidly turned out retail sims.

It seems like a gamble, albeit a low stakes one: If a publisher or studio announces a retail sim focusing on a yet-to-be-explored specialist niche, maybe it'll be a winner, maybe it won't be. If Lava Lamp Shop Simulator fails, maybe Tupperware Shop Simulator won't. Either way, it's not like a huge amount of time is put into their development.

That's likely the tact taken by "Business Tycoon", the studio responsible for Mall Together, Sporting Goods Shop, Tobacco Shop Simulator and Retail Company Simulator. Good luck finding any information about this so-called "Business Tycoon" studio, but all of their games are published by the ultra-prolific Chinese company Gamersky Games.

There are plenty of small studios not taking the scorched earth approach, such as the creators of Retro Rewind, Blood Pact Studios, and Boba Cafe Simulator's Caikemi. There is genuine demand for games like this, and evidence of studios putting a lot of love and effort in. But as has always been true in games, where there's high demand, you can bet on a deluge of rubbish clones.

Top Steam games by revenue (July 14 - 21)

Steam releases its top sellers charts on Wednesdays. Not much of note released late this week, save potentially a spike in pre-orders thanks to the Halo: Campaign Evolved embargo lifting.

It was pretty obvious that Palworld's 1.0 launch would catapult it up the top sellers chart but I'm surprised Counter-Strike 2 held out. I'm also surprised the Black Flag remake is still up there. It's a pretty conservative glow up for a game that's been super, super cheap for over a decade, but it's easy to underestimate the continued popularity of Assassin's Creed games.

The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu's appearance seems to suggest it's been a pretty quiet week on Steam overall. It released on July 15 and only as a bit less than 1,500 "mostly positive" reviews right now.

Last week's Steam deep cuts

Steam review of the week

"10/10. Would sledge hammer a rat to throw its meat at someone drinking gas out of the pump to then 360 a doppleganger before restocking the ramen."

John Tesco, proving that Shift At Midnight contains multitudes.