New branding guidelines suggest official third-party hardware support is imminent.
We found this logo hidden deep in an abandoned steel forge, Credit: Aurich Lawson | Steam
Longtime Valve watchers likely remember Steam Machines, the company’s aborted, pre-Steam Deck attempt at crafting a line of third-party gaming PC hardware based around an early verison of its Linux-based SteamOS. Now, there are strong signs that Valve is on the verge of launching a similar third-party hardware branding effort under the “Powered by SteamOS” label.
The newest sign of those plans come via newly updated branding guidelines posted by Valve on Wednesday (as noticed by the trackers at SteamDB). That update includes the first appearance of a new “Powered by SteamOS” logo intended “for hardware running the SteamOS operating system, implemented in close collaboration with Valve.”
The document goes on to clarify that the new Powered by SteamOS logo “indicates that a hardware device will run the SteamOS and boot into SteamOS upon powering on the device.” That’s distinct from the licensed branding for merely “Steam Compatible” devices, which include “non-Valve input peripherals” that have been reviewed by Valve to work with Steam.
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The new guidelines replace an older set of branding guidelines, last revised in late 2017, that included detailed instructions for how to use the old “Steam Machines” name and logo on third-party hardware. That branding has been functionally defunct for years, making Valve’s apparent need to suddenly update it more than a little suspect.
Steam Machines 2.0?
While there hasn’t been any wider official rollout for the Powered by SteamOS program yet, any move by Valve to offer officially licensed SteamOS compatibility for third-party hardware wouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Valve’s Lawrence Yang has been saying since 2022 that “we’re excited to see people make their own SteamOS machines.” And last November, Yang told PC Gamer that SteamOS would be made “more available to other handhelds with a similar gamepad-style controller” on a rough time frame of “soon.”
In August, after a SteamOS beta update suggested SteamOS might be coming to Asus’ Windows-based ROG Ally handheld, Yang told The Verge that the Valve hardware team “is continuing to work on adding support for additional handhelds on SteamOS.”
As we’ve waited for that official support to materialize—and for a long-promised general public distribution of SteamOS 3 on PCs— fans have had to get a bit creative to get the Linux-powered, gaming-focused OS onto their devices. Earlier this year, Ayaneo announced its Next Lite handheld would ship with HoloISO, an Arch Linux fork that seeks to “provide a close-to-official SteamOS experience” without Valve’s official support.
In 2015, the limited and underperforming software support for early SteamOS made Steam Machines a pretty poor alternative to Windows-powered gaming rigs. Today, the launch of the Steam Deck and the wide implementation of Proton-powered cross-compatibility has made modern SteamOS a much more appealing alternative to a costly Windows license for hardware OEMs. Here’s hoping more hardware makers get the opportunity to make official use of that alternative very soon.
