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Steam Deck will not have exclusive games, Valve confirms

Steam Deck | Photo credit: Valve / YouTube screenshot

Valve is the next video game company to release its gaming hardware, the Steam Deck. And Valve has already clarified it is not planning on making Steam Deck exclusive games.

Video games’ exclusivity to certain platforms has been a topic in recent years, especially among console users. But the availability of games on PC is a bit more flexible as long as players have the right technical specifications for the game they want. Valve also has good news for PC gamers looking forward to using Steam Deck in the future.

The company discussed some things about game development for Steam Deck in an FAQ page for developers, where Valve revealed its plans about game exclusivity. Simply put, Valve is not interested in making certain titles only playable on the upcoming portable gaming system.

“That doesn't make much sense to us,” Valve said. “It's a PC and it should just play games like a PC.” Based on that statement, it appears that games available on the Steam store will also be playable on Steam Deck.

The same FAQ page also gives gamers more ideas on the technical capabilities of Steam Deck. Since the device is designed to make PC gaming more possible on the go, some may have been wondering if Valve plans on introducing a model with 5G or LTE cellular connectivity. But Valve confirmed on the same page that it is not currently part of the plans for Steam Deck and said that users can “always tether” the gaming device to their mobile phones.

Valve also confirmed in this FAQ that the Steam Deck is equipped with 16GB unified memory. However, the 1GB of that RAM will be dedicated to the GPU, so the system actually has around 15GB of memory to run games in real-time. And that is still way more than most AAA games’ minimum requirement.

The first shipments of Steam Deck were originally planned to begin this month. However, Valve previously announced that the hardware’s schedule of arrival had been delayed by two months due to component shortage. Those who were able to secure early reservations for the product might start receiving the device around February 2022.

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