There was a brief period in which the gaming and tech world wasn't talking much about the upcoming Steam Deck, likely due to the initial hype dying down. However, it's come back into vogue once again, with development teams getting a first-hand look at the device, and screenshots from the Deck's version of the Steam Store being revealed. On top of that, Valve is now interested in answering some questions from studios, and is preparing an online session this month.
According to an announcement on the Steam website, the Washington-based company is inviting devs to attend a Q&A event on November 12, which will encourage people in the industry to ask, and have answered, any questions they have about the fast-approaching Steam Deck. The event will begin at 10am PT, or 6pm GMT. The Q&A session follows a series of talks from the Valve team, in which they will be diving further into some of the finer points of the hand-held PC system.
According to the post, some of the areas that will be covered include, the actual hardware of the system, as well as topics about the Steam Deck's OS, in particular its use of Proton. After each talk, people in attendance will be able to take part in the discussion. The point of these sessions is to help studios who will be developing for the Deck understand a lot more about it, especially as the device is due to launch in just a few week's time. While the event is free, the only stipulation is that those who wish to attend must be a Steamworks developer.
There's been quite a lot of talk about the device's compatibility with games, to such an extent that Valve hired people to check compatibility. With over 50,000 games on the Steam library in total, that's likely to be a lot of people who have been called upon to check which titles work on the Deck. From here, the company will be able to ascertain which games are verified as being compatible, which are "playable" and which are "unsupported," as well as those games which are "unknown."
With the release date drawing ever closer, many gamers and people in the industry are likely excited to see what the Steam Deck will be able to do. With videos showing games running well on the hand-held PC, there's quite a lot of buzz around it. It may still be getting compared to the Nintendo Switch, but Valve's portable system seems like it may outshine its potential competitor, especially given that it's a fully-fledged PC, not too dissimilar to the desktops people have in their homes.
The Steam Deck is due for release in December.
Source: Steam Community
