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Hardware

Valve Quietly Discontinues Steam Link Hardware Production (arstechnica.com) 74

Posted by msmash from the end-of-road dept.
Valve is quietly discontinuing Steam Link, the in-home streaming box it first launched in late 2015. From a report: A low-key announcement on Valve's Steam Link news page suggests that production of new units has ceased and that Valve is currently selling off the rest of its "almost sold out" inventory in the US, after selling out completely in Europe. Valve says it will continue to offer support for existing Steam Link hardware.

The $50 Steam Link was designed for streaming games from a local gaming PC to an HDTV in the same house, a job it did pretty well provided your networking hardware was up to it. In recent months, though, Valve has shifted its focus away from dedicated streaming hardware and toward mobile apps that can provide the same feature.
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Valve Quietly Discontinues Steam Link Hardware Production More

Valve Quietly Discontinues Steam Link Hardware Production

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  • I haven't had many issues. most of the issues I have had are based on my pc having a issue running the game I'm trying or steam not wanting to go into big screen mode. I also make sure the steam link and my pc are hooked up via network cable and not wifi.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
      Thanks for giving us an idea of what your experience has been. I always wondered if that box would really work as expected. I would think switching to mobile device streaming from a PC would be more problematic. I don't get paid to develop these products, so my opinion probably doesn't matter much.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by kobaz ( 107760 )

        Steam link is really cool. It works very well, and it's a nice way to basically remote desktop to your pc and you can watch movies on netflix and stuff like that.

        Soooo with the hardware going away... How will we connect usb controllers to a mobile app?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by darkain ( 749283 )

          BlueTooth, like many wireless controllers already are, and that work on mobile devices today.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tepples ( 727027 )

            BlueTooth, like many wireless controllers already are, and that work on mobile devices today.

            Until Google changes Android's Bluetooth stack, causing it to cease to work with the controllers you own. For example, changes in Android 4.2 made the "Wiimote Controller" app stop working with "No route to host" error.

        • That sounds similar to how I have a pair of Win7 boxes connected to two of my 55" TV's HDMI ports for gaming and watching video (VLC, Netflix, YouTube, and watchcartoononline). Star Trek Online, Champions, and Guild Wars 2 look quite nice on the big screen (though I haven't played any games in months); and City of Titans will be fantastic with this setup.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dissy ( 172727 )

          Soooo with the hardware going away... How will we connect usb controllers to a mobile app?

          I haven't used the steam link mobile app replacement, however I have used moonlight [moonlight-stream.com] which works with the NVidia streaming protocol for the same purpose.

          Being at the video card level instead of the steam client level, you can stream anything on your pc to it. It's open source and cross platform as well.

          The linux and windows versions of the client can stream back any input devices you plug into them.
          The Android/iOS clients use a crappy on-screen game pad, but you can turn that off and just pair a game pad di

      • It works wonderfully. I've used mine for a little over a year. My game PC sits behind the couch. I will echo what he said about ethernet connectivity, though.
        I can stream games over wifi to my laptop, but the Link doesn't appear good at this. I grabbed a MoCA adapter and attached it that way.
        I'm not holding my breath, but I'm hoping they decide to build another. Steam In-Home streaming is a lot less annoying than nVidia's GameStream.

      • Mine works really well, sad to see it discontinued. I got mine for $22 on sale. So long as you have a wired local network connection, it's rock solid, even with newer games. Kind of iffy for me on wi-fi, and my router is only 10 feet away with clear line of sight. Only issue I run into, are games that don't support a controller. I suppose a steam controller would address a lot of those.
         
        My opinion is to buy one if you've been considering it before they disappear.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I run steam streaming over 5G wifi through a 7 year old macbook. works like a dream.. been playing No Man's Sky, Dead Space and FF XIII at 720p .. Looks glorious, doesn't skip.. Totally awesome! .. Was going to get a steam link until i realized even my crappy old macbook could do it. Love it. Finally playing all the 'sofa/controller' PC games I have been ignoring cuz I don't like playing them at my desk.

    • My problem was that when someone in the house used the steam link, they left it in big picture mode and trying to get it out of big picture mode was always less than obvious.

  • That's a shame (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I brought two, both really cheap when on sale. One in the living room and one in the bedroom. It's nice to play from the bed or sofa as I would a console.

  • seems like dumb editorializing by the author as streaming to a mobile device isn't the same use case, and further Samsung also embeds steam streaming in a number of their televisions.

    It would be more cost effective for Valve to simply have an image for Raspberry Pi, known hardware and cheap. While more technically difficult than a dedicated device we are talking about PC gamers who likely have a bit of aptitude

    • Better yet, partner with Roku and/or Plex and let them worry about it. The Roku already does Bluetooth so hardware wise it can do the same thing as the link.

      • Ahh. Plex
        The same company that wouldn't let me view my library without creating a Plex account first.
        Also, they release something that they would say would replace WinAMP, which was rightfully completely shitted on since it was everything but.

  • Works really well for me to play console type games on my couch. But the whole Steam Link app seems a bit ridiculous, mobile games are for killing time when out and about, not for playing on my couch (at least not for me...).

    The idea of it running on the Samsung TV is cool but not interested in a new TV and if I did it most likely wouldn't be a Samsung. Wake me up when there is a Roku app.

    • Everyone who says it works well for them gets modded down. Weird.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Desler ( 1608317 )

        No they haven't. Not weird.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I had one to use over WiFi. I UNDERSTAND LATENCY WON'T BE PERFECT. My steam link was hopelessly unstable. I would constantly (like several times per hour) have to get up and manually unplug it to hard reboot the Link. Everyone (both real life friends and people on forums) just said "use a cable". Well, I bought it to do WiFi! "WiFi sucks for gaming." Ad infinium. I understood that wifi wouldn't perform well. I didn't think it would be hopelessly broken. I imagine I'm not the only one who found this frustrat

  • The Link has been in my closet ever since. Have never used it. TV is to close to the computer, so I ran an HDMI cable.

    They were running a promotion for these with that game.
    Buy the game and get it for $1 plus shipping.
    Honestly bought it for the game. Which turned out to be complete shit. A metroidvania style game that had a great look, great animation, and good audio,
    Too bad it was a shitty narration game with a boring narrator.

    • Axiom Verge is a pretty good metroidvania style game.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      TV is to close to the computer, so I ran an HDMI cable.

      Not everybody's living quarters are arranged that way. For many, perhaps most, the desktop PC and the television are in separate rooms.

      • "No PC in my living room, thanks" --ratbag [slashdot.org]
      • "I'm not putting together a living room PC rig just for one game, and I'm not lugging my desktop between rooms or stringing destructive ground-loop-ridden HDMI cables around the house so I can play a game on my PC on my [big TV] in my living room." --adolf [slashdot.org]
      • "Nobody wants to attach their PC to their TV" --kamapuaa [slashdot.org]
      • "Who wants a compute

      • While I agree that not everyone wants a PC in their living room, it can actually work out of the better. I got a small form factor Dell Optiplex for $150 from ebay and it's now the primary device I use on my TV for everything. It can run Netflix, Youtube, play off any streaming website. I can watch downloaded movies. I have Plex installed so there's a nice interface for all my locally stored content. You can run emulators for old game systems. You can use it for steamlink. You can play DVDs on it. You c

      • I know.
        I was pointing out that I bought it (for really no reason beyond I wanted it), and have left it in my closet for at least a year I think.
    • You're not playing it right - the narrator is utterly hilarious when you start to piss him off.

  • I got one for free when I bought a Steam controller. I'm not so impressed with the controller, but I use the Link all the time and it works a treat.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Damn shame about the Steam controller. It's so comfortable to hold, even better than the 360/One controllers, but those trackpads, yuck. I've tried it with about every genre and nothing really clicked for me.

  • Quietly Discontinues (Score:5)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @02:05PM (#57674964) Journal

    "Quietly Discontinues"? What were they supposed to do, spend a quarter million on a full page ad in the New York Times announcing it? They announced it through their normal channels. What more were they supposed to do exactly?

    • Moving from one project to another, without bothering with support & maintenance, is exactly what valve have always done.

  • Own both steam link and steam controllers (Score:3)

    by kaoshin ( 110328 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @02:14PM (#57675056)
    I bought the Steam link for two reasons. First, I have multiple people in my home who stream games. Given that requirement and how inexpensive the Steam link was, I would have otherwise needed to spend money on a Nvidia shield, or on HDMI/USB extenders, or on a crappy PC to do Steam in-home streaming to, etc. Second, it has first class support for the Steam controller which we prefer for playing games which don't have proper controller support. We are planning to use ours until they break, and when they do will probably go with one of the other alternatives I just mentioned, depending on what looks to be the best option when that time comes. The steam link is easily replaceable. I will on the other hand, be really sad when I can't find a replacement for my Steam controller. And as an off-topic thought this also reminds me of, I still haven't forgiven Logitech for discontinuing the G400/MX518.
  • could it be a new revision is coming? 4k support for one

  • If they don't want to build it, maybe they might chose to open-source the hardware?

    Does anyone know: Are there any ASICs in it, or is it stock hardware parts and a firmware load?

  • Just for fun, clicked on an old link... and it's on super clearance again.

    https://store.steampowered.com... [steampowered.com]

    Beat the rush!

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • A company that started out as a game developer, then put DRM on it, then switched to being a pure DRM distributor.

    I'm so glad there are alternatives.

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