The Steam Frame Is Important, Even If You Don't Buy One

This is all going to sound more /r/HailCorporate than usual, so I want to get some stuff out of the way now. Valve also has a history of contributing to loot boxes and DLC extraction, as well as antitrust issues. Beyond the need for meaningful checks against abuses by corporations (consumer-facing and otherwise), being a billionare isn't ethical, and there's a lot of other important infrastructure (and this kind!) that we could fund if GabeN and his whole class paid more taxes.

But this opinion-piece experiment is about the symbiotic relationship between open markets and open technology, where even companies operating out of a profit-driven capitalist instinct can ultimately benefit -- themselves, and the rest of us -- from preserving the commons.

I personally don't own a Steam Deck -- I'm incredibly picky about specs, and about finding devices I won't want to replace in a year for some incremental improvement. Keeping informed as a consumer -- including about how I could get the most versatile use out of my devices, and which ones would facilitate doing that -- is actually a large part of what drove me into this habit of obsessively consuming tech news in the first place.

My personal habits with devices are hit-or-miss; I historically have cared a lot more about open ecosystems than about practical adoption, and have opted almost exclusively for devices that you can unlock and upgrade on your own, over stuff where you just press a button and start. But that's a spectrum, and just becasue something can be modified doesn't mean a community will necessarily pop up around doing so. (In particular I've been burned by devices with quality control issues a few different times.) But the nature of being this specific about it also means I'm at least limiting my device purchases by not having to chase every shiny new piece of technology that drops. It's also meant sometimes passing on perfectly good devices over some minor issue that personally annoys me. In the Steam Deck's case, it was the lack of USB4. (One of my favorite devices that I do have, a Framework 13, was actually purchased less because I was in love with the original Intel model's spec sheet, and more so because a car crash forced my hand while the insurance payout made it free.)

But sometimes those devices are still important, even if they aren't right for you.

The Steam Deck was important in demonstrating that "gaming PC" does not have to mean "Windows." Even if you don't personally care about Linux. It's important because making that work in a consumer device meant a long-term project of contributing to Linux and the ecosystem around it, that started with enabling Steam support for Linux games and eventually landed on shipping compatibility tools to just run Windows games directly, and tailoring a user experience around it. In doing so, they've funded a variety of open source tools to power this -- contributions to the Linux kernel itself, emulation tools for translating processor instructions and Windows graphics layers, enhancements to the underlying desktop UI (KDE) and the flavor of Linux (Arch, btw) that it runs on top of... community resources, that can then be used independently of their relationship to SteamOS.

And this shouldn't be mistaken for altruism. Gabe Newell, famous for the idea that piracy is a service problem, has also publicly said that the whole industry benefits from PCs as an open ecosystem, where no one can tell you what you can publish or how. And the Steam Deck is the result of a long-term bet on that concept. Shipping a PC as a console, on a platform no one owns, gives them both more and less control of the overall experience. They can tweak the operating system to a specific hardware target as much as they need. Devs can use that one device, long-term, as a benchmark for compatitibility and performance targets. That data is then tracked by first (the Deck Verified program) and third (ProtonDB) parties. But meanwhile, the fact that you can bring your existing games to the thing is because they were able to ship a marketplace on PCs that were running Windows. So were a bunch of other stores, whose games will also run on a PC now. Microsoft's own vertical integration -- bringing app stores into the desktop, and slowly bringing the XBox platform into Windows -- presented a threat to that. And the Steam Deck ultimately served as a hedge against it.

Even if you don't personally care about Linux, the Steam Deck is important -- as a user, for open ecosystems, and for Valve -- because it means, for an ever expanding set of use cases, that you don't have to live in Microsoft's walled garden anymore.

You don't even have to live in Valve's. SteamOS supports running PC games from any storefront, and you also have the option to just wipe the whole console and install some other OS of your choosing.

And the Steam Frame, with its new and expanded compatibility tooling, is important in that same way, even if you don't care about VR. The improvements seem to directly target Facebook -- desktop-to-mobile translation enables running existing Steam VR titles (never mind existing flat-screen games in a big, virtually projected space), while Android compatibility targets the underlying system layer used in Quest devices -- but they also provide a long-term counterweight to Google that I think is as understated as it is interesting. Because in parallel to all of this, Google has also made a long-term bet on a future that's agnostic about things like the form factor and operating system that your applications run on.

On one end: as mobile devices have become more capable, they've also evolved full desktop window managers, to the point where this functionality is now (as of v17) part of stock Android. Beyond my being picky as a user, a mid-range smartphone can even be a form of tech minimalism in itself: because with a large enough screen to connect to it and a decent keyboard, you don't necessarily need a distinct laptop for a lot of use day-to-day uses. (And from time to time, even without this much, I've still managed to accomplish medium-length writing on a small screen with just a good keyboard.) Android, for its part, is built on a separate system layer (the Android Open Source Project, or AOSP) from desktop Linux but runs on the Linux kernel, and has contributed substantially to support for mobile devices in areas like its wireless networking stack. Their compatibility requirements for using Google Play include being able to boot off an unmodified Android build -- to the point of now encouraging manufacturers to contribute drivers directly upstream.

And beyond the extent to which there's a mobile app for most things now, the Web as a whole often presents an alternative to needing a dedicated app at all -- in large part because Chrome has made a long-term project out of making the Web more capable. It's actually made a lot of cross-platform desktop applications more capable. Electron, the desktop framework powerinig tools like Discord, Slack, VS Code, and numerous others, is effectively a Chrome window running on top of Node.JS -- a backend tool for a Web-native language, also running the engine from Chrome. Naturally, this includes their efforts to make an operating system out of that too -- which often fed improvements back into Android before eventually ceasing to be a separate project. (A notable example of this, also used in the Steam Deck, is an A/B partitioning system that installs updates to the other partition in the to background -- both to let you use the device while the update is running, and to make sure that there's always a backup you can boot to if the update fails for some reason.)

Now, these things aren't wholly positive either. They've exterted such extensive control over their platforms that they've faced various antitrust issues. Chrome's market position has made for a problematic relationship with the Web as a set of open and neutral standards. A quick trip to StatCounter as of this writing will show vanilla Chrome at just under a 70% market share, across all form factors. It's the core of a bunch of other browsers -- including Edge, the default browser for Windows.

On Android's side, AOSP is technically open, but that's always had terms and conditions. The excellent Ars Technica writeup at that link is a lot deeper on the topic, but in short, Google has a history of chaining important parts of the Android stack to their own infrastructure and branding -- whether it's the stock music player that's been abandoned for YouTube, or the location services that require Maps, or the use of their ecosystem for purchases. They also bar vendors who use their store from shipping competing versions of these services. Outside vendors have tried, but they were never fully able to compete with the global user or developer base for Google-branded Android -- of note, Amazon's Fire devices ultimately failed even after partnering with Microsoft, when they tried to ship Android compatibility into Windows.

Even with that infrastructure, Google services now include integrity checking, to verify that you're running a first-party version of Android and didn't just sideload all of Google's tools on top of something else. This pops up everywhere from banking apps to streaming services to games that use it as a form of anticheat, and has an effect of blocking the use of those things on third-party versions of Android.

Because open derivatives exist, but they depend on being able to unlock your device in the first place (already depends on vendor, and whether you even own the device outright), one depends on being able to re-lock your device (ironically, only supported on Pixels), and compatibility with the store and its apps can be something of an arms race. In particular, there are tools like MicroG that emulate infrastructure like location services using third-party tools other than Maps, but it has limits, including integrity checking.

Approaches vary, but they typically depend on some combination of:

And there are even more limitations coming. Google currently is moving forward with a plan to mandate the use of registered developer accounts in order to ship to first-party builds, even when even sideloading apps or using a third-party store like F-Droid. They're also working on a form of CAPTCHAs that require the use of a (verified) Android or iOS device to scan a QR code.

Commercially, the Quest is an exception. It's running AOSP, but it's a console -- a vertically integrated stack that Facebook more or less controls -- and targets a distinct market sector that has mostly been separate from Android's primary userbase. As much as HorizonOS is running the same operating system, it's not your phone, and doesn't follow any of the same models for interacting like one.

This limits the compatibility surface by a lot. Hardware sensors like GPS or cell connections don't need to exist in a VR headset, there's no expectation for compatibility with your watch or with Cast devices, they had existing social tools to build a separate gaming platform, and most apps built for touchscreens simply wouldn't have been designed for use on a headset anyway.

And while the Quest has mostly led this space, its position -- not just with standaone headsets as a whole, but running Android in particular -- is seeing real competition again from multiple directions. The core functionality for Android XR -- Google's latest attempt at extending into VR and AR devices -- extends on the flexible multiwindow support that's already been built for larger screens. Developers who have already been building Android apps for VR don't need Facebook to be involved to ship to it anymore. At least, assuming that this attempt goes any better than previous ones.

There's at least reason to believe it, though. Android is different now, and treats bigger screens as more of a core part of the operating system and less of a side project. Android XR, itself, is also less singular in its focus. That bet is hedged across multiple form factors, use cases, and market sectors, including devices that directly extend your existing phone. It doesn't have to have one breakout hit console (with or without loss-leader hardware pricing) that dethrones the Quest as a gaming device. It doesn't have to prove the concept and value of a dedicated computer for your face, as a general purpose computing device, in a way that the Vision Pro didn't do at scale. It doesn't depend on glasses with cameras continuing to be permitted, socially or legally, in public spaces. Even supporting its use with peripherals, instead of requiring distinct devices with their own processing and storage, hedges the platform against RAMageddon.

But while that's interesting, Steam's end is a lot more so in my opinion. As they've said, throughout the marketing, it's your PC -- Linux is an open ecosystem, and no one is getting in the way of you using it to install what you want, from the store of your choosing. Unlike an actual console, or like Google (historically), or like Apple, the manufacturer isn't making you ask them for permission. It supports Android apps, and goes so far as to include verification for what does and doesn't work.

That validation, and the tools for making various apps and games work, can extend out in both directions -- to Android compatibility across other spins of Linux, and to better compatibility with AOSP builds. Because verification that an Android game (or other app) runs on the Steam Frame is verification that it runs on a non-Google version of Android. It not only makes Facebook's Android stack less special, but makes Google's Android stack less special. And being based on desktop Linux, SteamOS users often can also just fall back to desktop applications -- whether non-mobile versions of the same game, or just a web browser -- if some mobile app doesn't work. Desktop shells do exist, outside of the Steam ecosystem.

They're shipping a console -- with the same benefits of one target platform that exists for years at a time, and the same low compatibility floor because their benchmark is the Quest -- but they also get to benefit from the much higher floor that Android apps now have, in supporting flexible windowing and big-screen devices (even if "big" is relative in these terms).

I don't expect this to suddenly make my banking apps work, any more than I expect this to turn Valve into a phone company in the short term. But mobile compatibility is a use case for Waydroid (the upstream tool that Valve's Android layer, Lepton, is built on) on the various mobile Linux projects that do exist. These things bleed into each other -- like how, conversely, Android is running Steam games now.

I also have no idea, speculatively, what kinds of enthusiast gaming headsets might try to compete in an open market where both SteamOS and Android XR exist as options.

The Steam Frame is important if the RAM crisis tanks the sales. It's important even if it can't compete with the Quest's consolesque pricing. It's important even if you don't care about VR. It's important because, like the Steam Deck, its whole existence is one more way that the OS no longer matters.