Steam Deck

Submission 14,173

Part of a series on Valve. [View Related Entries]

About

Steam Deck is an upcoming portable PC platform designed as a handheld console and developed by Valve. The device, which supports PC games available through the Steam distribution platform, is scheduled for a February 2022 release.

History

On July 15th, 2021, Valve announced the Steam Deck, a portable PC designed as a handheld console supporting PC video games available through the Steam distribution platform (announcement tweet^[1] shown below).

Introducing Steam Deck: powerful, portable PC gaming starting at $399. Designed by Valve, powered by Steam. Shipping February 2022.Learn more at https://t.co/ZOTx3KUCVK and reserve yours tomorrow. #SteamDeck pic.twitter.com/jcgbaKfT9c

— Steam (@Steam) July 15, 2021

The device has a 7-inch touchscreen supporting a 1280×800 resolution and 60hz refresh rate, a four-core AMD CPU, 8 RDNA 2 compute units for the GPU and 16 GBs of LPDDR5 RAM. The console will be available in 64GB, 256GB and 512GB storage versions.^[2]

Fandom

Immediately following the announcement, the device became a subject of viral discussions and memes online. On that day, Steam Deck reached number two trending rank worldwide and number one rank in several countries, including the United States.^[3] A Reddit post about the announcement received over 22,000 upvotes in /r/gaming^[4] five hours.

On Twitter, multiple viral posts comparing the device to the Nintendo Switch and other handheld consoles were made. For example, a tweet^[5] by VideoGameDunkey received over 800 retweets and 16,200 likes in five hours (shown below, left, additional examples center and right).

Playing Steam Deck at a Party

On July 16th, 2021, Twitter^[6] user @unquietskull posted a POV Awkward Party Reaction meme in which a Steam Deck with Half-Life running on it was edited in. The tweet received over 4,700 retweets and 22,300 likes in three days (shown below).

Later on the same day, Twitter^[7] user @yourboiandrielo posted a video edit based on the meme, with the post gaining over 800 retweets and 2,700 likes in three days.

On July 17th, Twitter^[8] user @Jokinspore posted a Team Fortress 2 edit that received over 346,000 views, 9,500 retweets and 42,600 likes in two days (shown below).

pic.twitter.com/7sysdPjXv1

— Jokinspore (@Jokinspore) July 17, 2021

On the same day, @Jokingspore tweeted^[9]^[10] several more video edits based on the same template, with more viral versions created by other users posted in the following days.^[11]^[12]^[13]

Steam Deck vs. Nintendo Switch

Steam Deck vs. Nintendo Switch is a console war between fans of Steam Deck portable PC platform and Nintendo Switch handheld console. The debate started on social media websites immediately following the announcement of Steam Deck in July 2021.