Valve has posted advance notice that Steam will not officially support macOS versions 10.11 ("El Capitan") and 10.12 ("Sierra") from September 1 2023. After this date "the Steam Client will no longer run on those versions of macOS." Valve recommends that users should upgrade to a newer version of macOS, if they intend to continue running Steam and related games and products. The cited reason for ending support is: "core features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of macOS. In addition, future versions of Steam will require macOS feature and security updates only present in macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) and above."

Last week, Valve announced that support for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 operating systems would cease at the very beginning of 2024. It has been a while since older versions of macOS have been declared as unsupported by the Steam Client - Valve announced, way back in late 2018, that it would stop supporting macOS versions 10.7 ("Lion"), 10.8 ("Mountain Lion"), 10.9 ("Mavericks") and 10.10 ("Yosemite") by January 1 2019. Again, an embedding of an iteration of Google Chrome was given as the main reason behind this discontinuation.

Valve has confirmed that its Steam platform will no longer support the Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 operating systems as of January 1st, 2024. Valve discontinued support for Windows XP and Windows Vista back in 2019.

Valve says that after that date, the Steam Client will no longer run on those versions of Windows and users will need to update to a more recent release. The reason behind such a move, according to Valve, is that the newest features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome which no longer functions on older versions of Windows, and that the future of Steam will require Windows features and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above.

THE NEXT ERA OF COUNTER-STRIKE BEGINS THIS SUMMER

Counter-Strike 2 is the largest technical leap forward in Counter-Strike's history, ensuring new features and updates for years to come. All of the game's new features will be revealed when it officially launches this summer, but the road to Counter-Strike 2 begins today as a Limited Test for select CS:GO players. During this testing period, we'll be evaluating a subset of features to shake out any issues before the worldwide release.

Counter-Strike 2 arrives this summer as a free upgrade to CS:GO. So build your loadout, hone your skills, and prepare yourself for what's next! Read on to learn more about some of the features of the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test.

Valve is apparently working on some sort of "game notes" system, and although details are vague, it could give players some way of adding private notes without leaving the game. The information was spotted by SteamDB Creator and dataminer, Pavel Djundik, suggesting such game notes "will be available in the Steam library, and on the web." Previously, the same source suggested that Valve is working on a new notification page as well.

The new "game notes" could easily be anything, but since a lot of players have been asking for a similar feature over at the Steam subreddit, it could suggest that Valve is actually listening to the community. As noted, Valve is also working on a notification page that could be similar to the notification page in the mobile app. Valve is expected to add the notification system as soon as it replaces some of the old parts of the Steam client. Of course, you should wait to hear an official announcement from Valve, as it could be coming soon.

It has been one year since we launched Steam Deck, and in celebration we're offering Steam Deck for 10% off! The discount will last for the duration of the Spring Sale, until March 23rd at 10am Pacific time. The sale applies to all shipping regions, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong via Komodo.

Steam Deck wouldn't be such a success without everyone in the community, so we've put together a little celebration video with highlights from Steam Deck's first year, with an emphasis on all of YOU.

Valve has shipped an updated Steam Deck Client to the Stable channel, bringing some improvements that were previously available in the Beta and Preview channels. The biggest update is the local network game transfers, which allow users to copy their Steam game installation and update files from one PC to another over a local network.

The new Steam Deck Client update also adds several other general features and Steam input support, including advanced HDR options in Developer Settings, added support for Sony DualSense Edge controller, Xbox Series X controllers connected via the Xbox Wireless Adapter, Logitech F310 controller, and more, as well as improves some features and fixes for various bugs.

As the Steam Deck turned out to be a big success, and has pretty much revived the handheld gaming market, there were so many questions about the future hardware upgrades, or even the second generation. In the latest interview, Valve's engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais said that while Valve certainly wants to make the Steam Deck better and is "looking at all avenues," upgrading the Steam Deck to OLED screen might not be that simple.

Earlier, Valve's designer Lawrence Yang and engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais have pretty much confirmed that a new and more powerful Steam Deck will not be coming in at least the next few years. In the latest interview, Griffais shed a bit more light on how complex some upgrades could be, especially the screen. Talking to PC Gamer, Griffais said that Valve "understands the limitations of the current tech that's in the Deck, in terms of the screen."

Valve has rolled out the new Steam Deck 3.4.6 OS stable update, which brings the Mesa 23.1 graphics driver update, adds support for Vulkan ray tracing and fixes some previous issues. The latest update was anxiously awaited by those playing either Forza Horizon 5, Resident Evil 4, or the new Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty game.

According to the release notes, the new update fixes a significant focus issue with Forza Horizon 5. The aforementioned Mesa 23.1 graphics driver update is bringing both functional as well as performance fixes. Mesa 23.1 fixes graphical corruption issues in both Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and Resident Evil 4. The new driver also adds Vulkan ray tracing to the DOOM Eternal game. Unfortunately, there is no word on DXR ray tracing support, although the RDNA 2 GPU certainly has hardware support for it.

Although there were some rumors earlier, Valve's designer Lawrence Yang and engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais, have confirmed that a new and more powerful Steam Deck will not be coming in the next few years. The Steam Deck has been quite popular and has somewhat revived the handheld gaming market. Despite having troubles with production and stock early on, it has been selling like hotcakes.

A year from its official launch, first rumors about an upgraded Steam Deck started to show up. The Steam Deck might be struggling to run some of the latest games, which means that Valve is certainly looking closely at what can be improved. Speaking to Rock Paper Shotgun, Lawrence Yang said that "a true next-gen Deck with a significant bump in horsepower wouldn't be for a few years."

Valve Software is giving final touches to its first PC title in close to a decade, and under its cult-classic Counter Strike franchise. The game's tightly-guarded development was leaked to the web in an NVIDIA GeForce software game profiles file, which described its binary executable files as "csgos2.exe" and "cs2.exe". VideoGames Chronicle dug deeper and discovered that the game has been in development at Valve for some time now, and is designed to be a modern e-sports title. It is based on the latest version of the company's in-house Source 2 game engine ("Half Life: Alyx"), and features an advanced multiplayer server architecture that ensures 128-tick, similar to "Valorant." The company is also using an in-house new matchmaking engine. With the emergence of this game on NVIDIA driver profiles, Counter Strike Global Offensive 2 should reach the public in some shape or form (at least an open beta), later this month.

Electronics brand JSAUX just announced the release of their docking station 7-in-1 for Steam Deck, also named 'HB0702', which is the enhanced version of their previous model 'HB0603'. As a new highlight, this portable device includes for the first time ever a DisplayPort 1.2 connector, highly-demanded by their user community, and three USB-A 3.2 ports. It features a classic HDMI 2.0 port, an Ethernet input and an additional USB-C port too. The accessory is now available on their web store at a retail price of $59.99, with no extra shipping cost.

Starting this summer, JSAUX docking stations have turned out into essential accessories to make the most of Valve's handheld console in screens with up to 4K resolution. Although they were designed specifically for Steam Deck, users can also dock smartphones and tablets as well. This flexibility makes it a very complete home entertainment system. Its classy and small casing, made of polished aluminium, makes it perfect for any kind of space or decoration style.

We're happy to announce that with today's batch of order emails, we have completed our reservation queue. We are now in-stock and Steam Deck is available for purchase! It's been more than a year since Steam Deck was first announced. Since day one we've been dealing with numerous supply chain issues and component shortages. While the team worked to resolve these issues and catch up with demand, we implemented a reservation system. This system enabled customers to save their spot in line without having to worry about refreshing pages, fighting scripts, or battling bots.

The team has worked hard over the past year to address shortages and solve logistics issues, and because of these efforts we're now manufacturing and shipping Steam Decks at our highest rate ever. Despite the ever-increasing reservation rate, we've been able to beat our shipping estimates, and as of today, finally complete the queue.

Valve's Steam Deck has been a resounding success by any metric, providing an impressive mobile gaming experience at Valve's first try. However, not all has been rosy: particularly for those customers that still haven't been able to receive their Steam Deck order. It's not just a demand problem; for a long while, Valve's hands were tied in the number of Steam Decks they could actually put together, due to continuing electronics component shortages that followed the COVID-19 tech race - paired with logistics nightmares fueled by constant lockdowns and limited transport operations around the globe.

But customers still awaiting their Steam Deck can now take a slight more hopeful outlook, as the company has confirmed via Twitter that all outstanding Steam Deck orders will be fulfilled before year's end. Through improvements to both logistics and manufacturing capacity, many of the reservations previously scheduled for 2Q2022 or later have been moved towards 3Q (July-September). All orders that weren't moved to 3Q are now solidly in Q4, according to the company. Valve has also confirmed that new orders will also be scheduled for 4Q. Do count on a hard limit to how many Steam Decks Valve can fit within it, though, so if you really, really want a Steam Deck before year's end, you better move fast.

The Steam Deck is undoubtedly the most powerful handheld gaming console yet. And just like its close competitor Nintendo Switch, gamers were expecting a docking station from Steam so they could play their favorite games on bigger screens. However, the fans have only met disappointments as Steam keeps delaying the launch due to parts shortage. The delay has affected the gaming community as the launch was supposed to happen in spring 2022. However, a new 3rd party dock solution has emerged as a potential solution to gamers' woes; iVoler Steam Dock.

The iVoler team has been working diligently to release a 3rd party dock solution for Steam Deck for some time. They're happy to announce that their flagship device has finally hit the shelves and is currently available on Amazon in seven regions; US, CA, UK, DE, FR, IT, and ES. The iVoler 3rd party dock solution is a blessing for Steam Deck gamers as it supports up to 4K resolution @ 60 Hz, providing gamers with the best viewing angles and the most immersive gaming experience. It's a sleek and compact unit specifically engineered to accommodate Valve's handheld; even the design has a stark resemble with Steam's delayed docking solution. Plus, the team has paid close attention to making it more user-friendly and convenient.

Tech manufacturer JSAUX just announced that the 2nd generation of its Docking Station for Steam Deck is now available for pre-order on its official website. Released at a price of $49.99, this new model features three USB 3.0 ports and a brand new Gigabit Ethernet port that will upgrade the user's experience with Valve's handheld console in 4K TVs. Shippings will start on July 10. Other new accessories for Steam Deck revealed by JSAUX are a special edition of their hard-shell carrying case and a screen protector, sold both as a bundle and separately.

After a successful Gen 1 that was quickly sold out, JSAUX announces that players can get their hands on both the Gen 1 (being sold for $39.99) and the Gen 2. Both products let players enjoy their library in 4K @ 60 Hz on a TV while having the Steam Deck on charge, with access to a variety of ports that allow for multiple add-ons; from external hard drives to an ethernet connection. The docking station also features compatibility with iPads and Android phones with USB-C ports.

Valve, handlers of the world's most popular digital games store and manufacturers of the Steam Deck, have announced that they've been able to more than double weekly production of the handheld console. Due to the production "picking up", as Valve says it, the company expects to double the number of handhelds shipped each week. This is especially good news for users that were expecting to receive their devices in the 3Q - shipments for these particular orders will begin on June 30th.

Valve doesn't make it clear what exactly was bottlenecking production. Manufacturing and logistics have been showing signs of normalization following a couple of years with snag after snag due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent war in Ukraine. Overwhelming demand for graphics chips across the product spectrum may have pushed Valve to accept a smaller pie of AMD chips than the company would like to, and might be one of the reasons the company was forced to extend deliveries of pre-orders for the device.

iFixit accidentally listed their lineup of Steam Deck replacement parts for purchase before removing them shortly thereafter. The company listed several key components of the Steam Deck on their UK store including the Motherboard, Screen, Speakers, Fan, and Adhesive. These components do not come cheaply with the bare motherboard excluding an SSD costing £289.99 (360 USD) while the base models screen costs £59.99 (75 USD) with the premium anti-glare screen costing £89.99 (110 USD). These parts have all now been removed from the website with iFixit promising to officially release them soon while honoring any orders that were placed before the removal. The complete list of parts and their prices offered by iFixit can be found below.

iFixitEarlier today we published some pages related to our upcoming parts launch with Valve. These went live earlier than we planned, so we ended up taking them down. If you did get a parts order in, we'll honor it.

A federal judge in Seattle has recently ruled that the antitrust class-action lawsuit brought against Valve by Wolfire Games over their Steam Key Price Parity Provision can proceed. The Key Price Parity Provision is a policy that prohibits game developers from pricing their games cheaper on competing storefronts such as the Epic Games Store even if they offer lower fees. The judge noted that Valve "relies on provisions within Steamworks Documentation to impose conditions on how non-Steam-enabled games are sold and priced." and that "Valve also threatens game publishers with punitive action, including removal of their Steam-enabled games, if they sell non-Steam-enabled versions of those games at lower prices,". The ruling states that allegations of the company exploiting it's market dominance to threaten and retaliate against developers were "sufficient to plausibly allege unlawful conduct". This decision will allow for a class-action lawsuit to be brought against Valve.

With the debut of the Steam Deck handheld gaming console, the whole community wanted to grab one and made preorders for a few up-front months. Over the last five weeks, the console held the second spot as the best seller by revenue chart; however, that number changed in the console's favor. According to SteamDB, which collects information from Valve's Steam platform, the Steam Deck console climbed to the number one spot as the best selling item by revenue. This is no surprise given that the Steam Deck base model is priced at $399+, with top models going for $500. For the past three weeks, the leading competitor was the game Elder Ring, which sold 12 million copies in the past three weeks. We are yet to see if Steam Deck manages to hold the top spot in the charts or if other games start to defeat it.

If you're one of the lucky few that managed to pre-order a Steam Deck and have had it delivered, you might be interested in knowing that Steam has now released its promised Windows drives. For now, Windows 10 is supported, but Valve is promising support for Windows 11, as soon as the company has incorporated fTPM into the device UEFI. Dual-boot isn't supported at this point in time, but this is something that Valve is also working on and is promising to deliver in SteamOS 3. In addition to the Windows drivers, Valve also added instructions on how to do a system recovery to get SteamOS back on the device, if Windows isn't for you on the Steam Deck.

The driver release includes drivers for the GPU, WiFi and Bluetooth, but audio drivers are missing for now. Valve suggests that those wanting to use Windows on their Steam Deck either use Bluetooth for audio, or rely on USB-C until the company has finished the drivers. This means that no sound will come out of the speaker or 3.5 mm audio jack for the time being. Valve will not offer any kind of Windows support, so it's up to you to get it installed and working on the Steam Deck.

Elden Ring launched in late February to rave critic and consumer reviews. The game is an excellent showcase of From Software's gaming design ethos, but ultimately proves that the company's rendering engine still requires work after years of installments due to widely-reported stuttering issues - irrespective of hardware configuration. A fix for Elden Ring's stuttering issues has surfaced on late Monday - courtesy of Valve and its Proton wrapper, and only applicable to the Steam Deck. In a way, this turns Steam Deck into the smoothest device to play Elden Ring on.

The issue with Elden Ring's stuttering has been linked to the games' continuous shader loading. Apparently, Elden Ring allows users to enter its vast open-world without pre-compiling the required shaders (something that we've seen other games do through usually lengthy boot-up processes) for the specific hardware. This forces the game to constantly compile shaders as they're required (due to world loading, animation loading, among other triggers), which is responsible for the stuttering issues gamers on PC have been encountering.

Valve is excited to announce the official launch of Steam Deck, the powerful all-in-one portable gaming PC first revealed by the makers of Steam over the summer. Emails with order details start going out today to the first customers in the queue, with devices shipping immediately after. Steam Deck is the first handheld device designed to play Steam games, with a custom processor developed in cooperation with AMD that makes it comparable to a gaming laptop. You can play games from your Steam library wherever you go; and as an open PC, you can also install any software or connect with any hardware you want. Steam Deck starts at $399, with increased storage options available for $529 and $649.

Gabe NewellPC gamers and developers have always wanted a handheld option that plays all the great titles, Steam Deck gives them that."

Valve has recently launched a tool that allows you to check what games from your Steam library have been tested and confirmed to work with the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck runs the custom SteamOS Linux distribution with the Proton compatibility layer for Windows exclusive titles. The compatibility tool from Valve lists games that have been tested into three categories consisting of verified, playable, unsupported in addition to a list of currently untested titles. Valve classifies games listed as verified as not needing any configuration for use with the Steam Deck and those classed as playable may require modifications to get controls working correctly. You can check what games are supported from your Steam library by following this link.

Valve has recently announced a collection of new store discount policies to clamp down on fake sales and offers that currently plague the Steam store. The cooldown period for sales will be reduced from six to four weeks with exclusions for the major store-wide seasonal sales. The new rules prohibit publishers from discounting their game within 28 days following a price increase in any country and prices can no longer be adjusted during sales. The allowable discount range has also been restricted to between 10 and 90 percent while custom sales must now last for 1 to 14 days. These new policies will take effect starting March 28th, 2022 and will hopefully improve the user experience.

The latest Steam Hardware survey from January 2022 shows significant growth for VR headsets with the number of connected units reaching 3.4 million or 2.14% of Steam users. This is up from 2.95 million in December 2021 with the Meta Quest 2 responsible for the majority of this growth now accounting for 46.02% of the VR headsets used on Steam despite being able to operate without a connected computer. Meta now controls 67.3% of the PC VR market with Valve coming in second at 14.4%, HTC third at 11.2%, and Microsoft fourth with just 5% market share. The total number of monthly-connected VR headsets has risen 29.5% since this time last year but it remains to be seen if this growth will continue past the holiday season.