Three Reasons I Won’t Buy a Steam Deck
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There’s no denying that Valve’s Steam Deck is a wonderful little device. It’s a full-fledged gaming PC in a Nintendo Switch-like form factor, running on a custom Linux distribution that has fairly good compatibility with a decent chunk of games on Steam. So far, so good.
There’ve been a few times in the past couple years where I’ve been tempted by one, but lately I’ve been thinking about it more and more, and I’ve decided I’m probably never going to buy one. There are three main reasons for this, some more valid than others, so let’s go over them one by one.
Here are three reasons I’ll never buy a Steam Deck.
The Steam Deck Isn’t Available Everywhere
Right now, there are only a few regions where you can buy a Steam Deck. If you’re in North America, Europe, or Japan, it’s not a problem, but if you’re outside of those regions, you’re pretty much out of luck. I, unfortunately, live outside of those regions, as a native resident of the land down under, Australia.
There are actually ways to buy the Deck here in Australia. Gray imports exist, and they will, for the most part, get you a Steam Deck that will do all the things a Steam Deck will do. But it comes at a cost — both literally and figuratively. The markup on these devices is massive compared to the prices in any other region, and the lack of manufacturer warranty, on an electrical device, is always a massive concern.
Windows Handhelds Are Getting Better
The Steam Deck is about 18 months old now, and as is the nature of these things, its hardware is already starting to feel dated. Sure, you can play games like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Armored Core 6 on it, but the experience isn’t going to be perfect by any means. The mobile hardware space is iterating rapidly, and a big company like Valve either doesn’t want to or just can’t pump out newer hardware quickly.
But take a look at something like the Asus ROG Ally. Released just a year later, the Ally is more than twice as powerful as the Deck, and despite the overhead of Windows – a much more resource intensive OS – the Ally still routinely outperforms it. Asus isn’t the only one either. Companies like Ayn, Ayaneo, and GPD have been pumping out handhelds for years, rapidly iterating and improving on the concept. Their products are typically more expensive, sure, but at this stage they’re getting more powerful by the day it seems. A high-end Windows handheld today will outperform a Steam Deck, and provide a much wider range of compatibility to boot. Which brings us to our next point.
The Steam Deck Can’t Play Kingdom Hearts
Look, I really like Kingdom Hearts, and if I could play Kingdom Hearts in bed or on the go, I would be the happiest little creature on the planet. Unfortunately, the PC releases of the Kingdom Hearts games just don’t work on the Steam Deck. There are a few reasons for this — they’re Epic Games Store exclusive, which is an annoying process to get through on the Deck, and they use media libraries not available on Linux, which means even if you can get it working, the cutscenes won’t play.
And that really comes down to the biggest issue with the Steam Deck: its compatibility. Don’t get me wrong, what Valve has done with Proton on the Deck is absolutely incredible, it’s made some huge leaps for Linux gaming and compatibility. But it’s not perfect. PC gaming is about more than just Steam, and unfortunately, Linux just can’t compete with the decades of native compatibility with games built into Windows already.