Valve answered the most frequent questions from developers regarding the features of the Steam Deck handheld gaming device.
- Steam Deck supports multithreading, up to eight threads;
- The device does not support LTE or 5G, but nothing prevents tethering it to a phone;
- Valve sees no point in Steam Deck exclusives. “It’s a PC, and games should just play like on a PC”;
- Valve recommends that developers use frame rate caps via a dedicated limiter — this will help extend battery life;
- Spare parts for the device will also go on sale alongside it;
- The device carries 16 gigabytes of memory on board, of which 1 gigabyte is fully dedicated to the GPU, but depending on the workload, it can use up to 8 gigabytes;
- The Unreal, Unity, and Godot engines will receive integration tools that will significantly simplify game development on them for Steam Deck;
- Valve intends to eventually release SteamOS as a standalone operating system;
- Steam Deck features support for Vulkan dynamic rendering;
- Steam Deck performance does not depend on the power source;
- Technically, Steam Deck supports virtual reality, but Valve did not create the device for that.
Steam Deck will go on sale in February 2022.