Valve Highlights Steam Deck and Handheld PC Achievements in 2023 Annual Summary

2023 was a big year for Steam, and a gigantic one for the Steam Deck. We saw the release of the first hardware revision, bring OLED panels to the already fantastic base model, a huge SteamOS update that added in color saturation and more, and new customization options like the ability to undervolt. Now, Valve has released their annual update for 2023, with a dedicated section to talk about what has been achieved with the Steam Deck, SteamOS, and the handheld PC market.

In the Steam Deck section, Valve first goes over the Steam Deck and a quick overview of what they have accomplished. This includes the release of the Steam Deck OLED, new customization options, and SteamOS's 3.5 update, which added in HDR support, VRR with the Steam Deck, and a lot of performance and stability fixes.

They then went on to talk about SteamOS and proton, the compatibility layer that allows Windows games to run as smoothly as possible on the Steam Deck. There, they discussed how the layer helps a lot of developers and how SteamOS provides many tools that help make the platform more accessible and easier to develop. They also mentioned the benefits of these new improvements and how the Deck Verified pipeline has been improving, though I still see some issues overall with some Verified games needing changes to run more optimally and Unsupported games that work perfectly fine (Granblue Fantasy: Relink).

Valve also made special mention of the handheld PC market and brought up the ROG Ally, OneXFly, and AYANEO handhelds that help give users different choices to play portably however they want to. I was a bit surprised that they didn't make mention of the Lenovo Legion Go here, due to it being the other big handheld from a major computer company, but regardless, it is nice seeing Valve talk about the handheld PC market and how it's good for everyone to see more hardware released.

The report goes into a lot more aspects of Steam, and it's an intriguing read, but those were the big highlights relating to the Steam Deck. I highly recommend checking it out, though; Valve has been seeing a lot of increases in-game revenue and user interaction compared to last year. And as always, it is wonderful seeing the transparency.

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