Valve has sent waves of excitement across the gaming world with the unveiling of its new mini gaming PC, the Steam Machine, which runs SteamOS and surprised gamers across both the PC and console ecosystems. Valve seems intent on providing a console gaming experience while maintaining a large slice of its PC gaming identity.
With hardware that may just about challenge both the PS5 and Xbox Series X, we’re looking at a potential serious contender within the console gaming market space. While the Steam Machine isn’t an outright gaming console, it’s essentially placed within a hybrid PC console space, which (on paper, according to specifications) looks like it could get close to the Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo consoles.
For now, though, that’s not the focus. For current PC gamers, the Steam Machine has the potential to introduce many solutions to gaming on SteamOS, and a variety of them are improvements we’re actively seeing (specifically for handhelds).
However, two potential huge impacts stand out that the Steam Machine could have on PC gamers on Linux – whether that be those currently using the Fedora-based Linux distro, Bazzite, or any other SteamOS clone, with the hopes of moving away from Microsoft’s Windows 11 for good.
The Steam Machine could force better anti-cheat support for Linux
I’ve covered this topic before, with very little hope that any changes would come from it; publishers such as EA and Activision are seemingly very stubborn with their anti-cheat systems. While the aim is to eliminate cheaters in multiplayer games, anti-cheat is already frowned upon since it doesn’t completely work, and poses some potential security vulnerabilities.
Perhaps the bigger issue, though, is that these anti-cheat systems are not designed to work on Linux, as they require kernel access that can easily be bypassed there, meaning SteamOS gamers miss out on big titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Battlefield 6.
These games can run on SteamOS, but until publishers and developers decide to alter their anti-cheat systems to work on Linux, nothing can be done to solve it.
That’s exactly where the Steam Machine is a big player; if this new hybrid gaming PC console can manage to perform well in the gaming market, and make the likes of Sony and Microsoft sweat a little, then it increases the chances of EA, Activision, and many other game developers and publishers having their hands forced to make their anti-cheat run on Linux.
It’s been done already with games like Splitgate 2, where the developer updated its anti-cheat system to work on SteamOS using Proton. This is arguably the biggest reason why gamers like me are reluctant to move away from Windows 11 – and once that changes, so will my main operating system.
Valve may consider full SteamOS desktop PC support
While I absolutely love SteamOS and what it has to offer for handheld gaming PCs, there’s not so much luck when it comes to desktop gaming PCs.
Valve currently doesn’t offer official SteamOS support for desktop PCs, and yes, Bazzite exists exactly for this – however, that’s still in beta with major caveats for Nvidia GPU users, and official SteamOS support from Valve itself is more reliable than an unofficial alternative.
I’m not suggesting Bazzite is bad, far from it, but Valve’s support could open the door for the likes of the Epic Games Launcher or Rockstar Games Launcher coming to the OS with official versions. Game launchers might be a far fetch, but what isn’t is a better Discord version for Linux that can be used in SteamOS game mode, without streaming issues or random crashes.
With the Steam Machine, that potential reality is made possible, as this is essentially the first time Valve has created a mini PC (outside of the Steam Deck) that is using the latest and arguably the best version of SteamOS.
It wouldn’t be a surprise, then, if we saw an official announcement where support is offered for a wider range of PC setups, especially since this is already the case with the Lenovo Legion Go S handheld.
Ultimately, these factors would put the final nail in the coffin for me with Windows 11, making gaming on PC much easier and simpler, without the frustrations of highly frequent bugs or bloatware.
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