Valve asks Steam Deck owners to not smell vent fumes

Valve has released their annual Best of Steam 2023, a showcase of what was played most and made the most money broken down into roughly grouped tiers: Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze. In a year of absolutely great games, some of these chart-toppers aren't surprises, but dang I'd never have guessed that Half-Life, the 1998 classic, would make the top tier of the most-played Steam Deck games by daily active players.

Valve’s portable PC platform has enjoyed another good year, with a new OLED model and cheaper entry point contributing to a steady increase in popularity.

Valve offered a peek behind the curtain of Steam’s biggest games of 2023 on Wednesday, revealing which titles dominated the sales charts on PC gaming’s biggest digital platform. Valve also divulged which games Steam users — and Steam Deck owners — played the most this year, with Baldur’s Gate 3, Hogwarts Legacy, Starfield, and Sons of the Forest appearing in multiple top-12 lists.

When the biggest library in PC gaming went mobile with Valve’s Steam Deck, there are few rivals that can even compete. Released in February 2022, the all-black handheld gaming computer looks like a bigger Nintendo Switch with access to far more games. It uses the Linux distribution SteamOS that directly integrates the Steam storefront. For anyone who already has a number of games in their Steam library, it’s a straightforward and effective way to play them on the go with few frills. But there’s a whole lot more you can do with the Steam Deck if you know some of its tricks, because technically it’s a mobile computer with a Linux operating system with a lot of flexibility.

It's that time of year again — the 2023 Steam Awards have kicked off their voting! Started in 2016, the Steam Awards have been an annual event in which the players themselves vote on the best game in a number of different categories such as: the «Better with Friends» Award, the «Choices Matter» Award, the «Best Game You Suck At» Award, and the «Labor of Love» Award. Each year the categories change slightly, with this year's addition being the Best Game on Steam Deck Award, which includes Diablo 4 in the list of player voted nominees! Developers of the games chosen to receive an award in their respective categories will receive a Steam Awards trophy, but any players who vote will also receive a gift as well. Those who vote in each of the 11 categories on Steam will unlock special stickers from each category voted on to use on the platform! In order to cast your vote, you must be a registered Steam user.

By Steven Petite and Jon Bitner on

Marvel Comics has been asking “What if?” for far longer than the beloved Disney Plus streaming show has been on the air. You know, easy questions like “What if Daredevil’s Karen Page has lived?” or “What if Conan was teleported to another historical timeline?” Now it’s finally asking the hard question that we’ve all been waiting for: What if Paul Reiser hadn’t died?

It's nearly the holidays, which means some of you might be looking for something to play on your Steam Deck while you're away visiting family. The choice just got a little harder: beautiful early access tactics game Songs Of Conquest and clever fantasy citybuilder Against The Storm are both now Steam Deck verified.

Valve works extraordinarily hard to remove bugs from the Steam Deck experience with frequent updates. But a company called Deckbuttons is keen to add them, sort of. One of the resin-based directional pads that it makes contains actual bugs, which fulfills the desires of a certain… someone out there, right?

If you're plugged into the world of gaming, you will have heard of the Steam Deck by now, even if you didn't know there was also an amped-up OLED version available to buy.

Ever since the first Steam Deck came out, I’ve been a fan. I bought the Deck in the first wave of units, getting mine a few weeks after it initially launched in 2022, and it has certainly been put through its paces with me. I’ve traveled the world with my Steam library following me wherever I went, from Iceland, Canada and more. I’ve loved this device, even with its limitations.

Remember when people were licking the game cartridges from their Nintendo Switches back in 2017? The actual company had to make a post on their support page telling people to not do that. Doing so wasn’t harmful, but it still shouldn’t be done. Now it seems that we’re in a time where people are huffing those fumes coming from Valve’s Steam Deck.