The return of Steam Machines? Valve rolls out new “Powered by SteamOS” branding.

Steam Machines 2.0?

While there hasn’t been any wider official rollout for the Powered by SteamOS program yet, any move by Valve to offer officially licensed SteamOS compatibility for third-party hardware wouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Valve’s Lawrence Yang has been saying since 2022 that “we’re excited to see people make their own SteamOS machines.” And last November, Yang told PC Gamer that SteamOS would be made “more available to other handhelds with a similar gamepad-style controller” on a rough time frame of “soon.”

In August, after a SteamOS beta update suggested SteamOS might be coming to Asus’ Windows-based ROG Ally handheld, Yang told The Verge that the Valve hardware team “is continuing to work on adding support for additional handhelds on SteamOS.”

As we’ve waited for that official support to materialize—and for a long-promised general public distribution of SteamOS 3 on PCs— fans have had to get a bit creative to get the Linux-powered, gaming-focused OS onto their devices. Earlier this year, Ayaneo announced its Next Lite handheld would ship with HoloISO, an Arch Linux fork that seeks to “provide a close-to-official SteamOS experience” without Valve’s official support.

In 2015, the limited and underperforming software support for early SteamOS made Steam Machines a pretty poor alternative to Windows-powered gaming rigs. Today, the launch of the Steam Deck and the wide implementation of Proton-powered cross-compatibility has made modern SteamOS a much more appealing alternative to a costly Windows license for hardware OEMs. Here’s hoping more hardware makers get the opportunity to make official use of that alternative very soon.