Interview: Valve talks SteamOS on third-party handhelds

The Steam Deck has been the biggest PC gaming hardware story of the last few years. So it’s no surprise that the idea of running SteamOS (perhaps the most celebrated component of that machine) on other handhelds like the Legion Go S is also a big deal. On the show floor of CES 2025, PCWorld’s Adam Patrick Murray cornered Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais to chat about the future of Steam.

The Legion Go S will be the first non-Valve handheld with an officially blessed build of the Linux-based SteamOS available to buy directly from the manufacturer, alongside a version running Windows 11 that’ll be released sooner at a higher price. Griffais says that Valve is excited to work with companies like Lenovo (among others, presumably including Asus at one point) to offer SteamOS on devices that offer different takes on the handheld form factor and features.

There are a lot of possibilities here, from more outlandish hardware like the first Legion Go’s detachable controllers, to far more powerful machines with higher-end hardware, to a set-top box-style device focused on PC gaming, a sort of spiritual successor to Valve’s original concept for the Steam Machines. Especially since Griffais says Valve is providing SteamOS without a charge to these partners. While theoretically almost any x86-based hardware can run SteamOS, the official “Powered by SteamOS” branding will indicate a closer working relationship between Valve and hardware vendors.

For a market that already tends towards cheaper devices thanks to the Steam Deck’s original low price point and integrated graphics, that could be a huge differentiator versus typical Windows-powered machines. Not that you’ll necessarily have to choose one or the other — Valve has already committed to offering SteamOS builds that users can install on existing devices. That might even position SteamOS as a replacement for Windows on more conventional gaming laptops…though that’s Adam’s supposition, not Griffais’.

And what about a new model of the Steam Deck, a successor to the device that kicked all of this off? Is a Steam Deck 2 even necessary if other major manufacturers are on board? Adam couldn’t get a definitive answer from Griffais, but he did say that Valve “will be working on that heavily in the background. We have a ton of hardware efforts going on, we think it’s really important for us to…put our best foot forward there and to show what we think the experience is, according to our goals.”

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