The upcoming Steam Deck from Valve is fast becoming one of the most hotly-anticipated devices of the year. When Valve announced the hand-held PC device last week, much of the community and media began to get excited about this latest portable console, which is actually more of a PC than something like, say, the Nintendo Switch. Alongside the Deck's many features, the company is now saying that it will fully support mods for games.
In a recent interview with IGN, Valve's Greg Coomer and Pierre-Loup Friffais have both said that the Steam Deck will absolutely have mod support, saying that because the device is essentially a PC that's handheld, it has all the same functionality of a regular PC. This feature represents something that no other hand-held console or piece of hardware has had in the past.
While other consoles, such as the aforementioned Switch, do support mods, they are often limited to official add-ons, whereas the Steam Deck has full support for all of them, including all the best Skyrim modifications players can get from the likes of Nexus Mods. In the interview, they said that the Valve portable device is compatible with Steam Workshop and is able to support modding in much the same way as a regular PC. They also said that players won't be limited to the Steam Store either, as people will be able to download and play games from other storefronts, such as Origin and GOG, etc.
Reservations for the Steam Deck already sold out for 2021 just a few days ago, which means so many people are already wanting one of these. The fact that the 64 GB model, which is the cheapest of the three that will be available, has a slower eMMC hard-drive doesn't appear to have deterred too many people as Valve push pre-orders back to Q2 and Q3 of 2022 due to popularity.
Overall, Valve's foray into hand-held gaming is likely to be big news for a while, and although the now-discontinued Steam Controller was not a huge success, it's entirely possible that this latest device could pull in a lot of players who have not had the funds to build a gaming PC. As the Steam Deck is essentially just a hand-held home computer which comes pre-installed with the Steam OS, which can be removed and have Windows in its place if users wish, even the top-end model costing $650 could be a nice alternative to a PC that can set people back a couple of grand.
Valve's Steam Deck releases this holiday.
