The Malgorian Blog

So had the Deck since last Monday but I had a hell of a time trying to figure out how to connect to the Wifi. Essentially had to change up the encryption and the like. But also my wifi modem sucks shit - after it connected finally on the first go it did it's required update and rebooted.

.. And promptly forgot about the Wifi. Tried signing in to Steam and kept getting error 56. Which according to the internets, is wifi issues. Not signed in.

So I tried signing it in again and it failed repeatedly. So after disconnecting and trying to reconnect a couple times, I said fuck it and went into the living room where the modem is and tried again. And it found it. X_x

So tried signing in again, and it failed again. Finally after a few other issues I was able to sign in to Steam.

One good thing I'll say about it, when I look at the icons for my games on the Steam Deck it shows me the compatibility ratings for the game. So I don't have to go searching the store for every game. I'm guessing about 20% of my library is marked verified. Give or take. Probably another 20-40% is 'playable' (yellow ! sign) which means it'll run, but there are some issues with it and I think that means Valve is working with the devs to try to get the issues resolved. Whether the devs are willing of course is another matter.


Right now installing Vampire Survivors. It's just about finished installing. I'll probably install another couple games on it but then I'll leave it until I get an external microSD card to put in the thing.

... actually it's already almost out of power after all this shittery so I'm probably going to turn it off to charge it up.

I clicked on the steam cloud bar where it said it couldn't sync up and it worked this time. Probably failed because the download was sucking my pitiful bandwidth away...

So in case it helps anyone, with my wifi setup, originally my ancient modem was still using WEP encryption. I changed it up to WPA so I could just feed it the SSID and passkey then it would negotiate all the details on it's own. However being physically close to the modem helped me as well if just for the connection phase. I was able to bring it back into the bedroom after that without it losing connection.

Steam recently started shoving in everyone's face via their personalized steam fronts, the Steam Deck. Despite how I frame it in the last sentence, I'm not actually turned off of the idea of a handheld steam machine. (It's more a critique about what I think about the personalized store front experience given how bad it is at predicting shit I want to see.)

It's actually quite an expensive piece of hardware, with Canadian price tags ranging from 499 to 819 dollars, but then I bought a Switch for 399 dollars. If I were to get one of these Decks it would be for two reasons perhaps.

1. Potential Portability.
2. Potentially removing the vice grip Microsoft would have on my desktop choices.

As a handheld, it's definitely intended as a portable machine - and that could be useful for me if I just wanna lie down on the couch or bed and play some games, or to take with me on vacation potentially. My entire steam collection at my fingertips! Additionally this thing is designed to be able to plugged into your TV - it'll even have a sold separate docking station to make that more convenient. Kinda Switch-ish in that respect but that's fine too.

With regards to Microsoft, if I do most/all of my PC gaming on the Deck then I'll be more freely able to use Linux without sacrificing the ability to play games. I wish a lot more games would simply run on Linux but we got that chicken and egg thing going on with game availability on Linux. People don't port to Linux because it doesn't make economic sense - people don't buy games on Linux because the games essentially aren't available.

Even if this Deck itself is running Windows (and it likely is given Valve bragging it'll play the bulk of games on the platform, even current AAA titles) that isn't as big a concern to me. I'm not 100% about getting away from everything Microsoft - it's just that Microsoft's vice grip on consumer choice over the whole games issue becomes far less a concern if it's possible to scoop up all the games and put them into a single dedicated unit designed to play them.

Also the Deck is at the end of the day "Just a PC" according to Valve that's essentially designed by default to run steam. However as they say in their advertising, there's nothing stopping you from installing third party games and software on it.

This makes me think "Ooo. Would be fun to install GOG Galaxy alongside it!" Whether I would or not I don't know, but it would be nice to have the option there.

The biggest hurdle for me is how to pay for it. I ain't handing over credit card numbers for gaming shit. I made that decision years ago as I watched the Sony PS3 shit go down. I also don't hand credit card numbers over for things like repeated billing plans like Netflix. If they want my money they'll make prepaid cards available. This is the ONLY reason Crunchy Roll doesn't get any of my money. If they had prepaid cards available at stores in Canada I'd let my netflix subscription lapse in a heartbeat.

It does look like you can buy it via your steam wallet on steam, given that's where you have to reserve them currently for the Q2-Q3 2022 launch. This means I'd have to buy a bunch of prepaid cards for it!

However I'm not going to reserve it. Instead I just wish-listed it so that when it becomes available for general purchase I'll get a notification. This gives me time to watch how it unfolds over the next year in case it gets raked over the coals in early tests over various shit. Between now and Q2-Q3 2022 (Which I believe is Summer/Fall of 2022, so a little over a year minimum - most likely the general sales won't start until Q4 which would be Jan-March 2023.) that's plenty of time to buy some steam cards or at least put some money into savings for those cards later. If I find out I can't just buy it via my steam wallet on Steam itself, everything here is moot and I'll just pass on the system.

In short, the Deck does look nice. Steam is also trying hard to avoid any controller drift issues like we're seeing on the Switch and PS5 controllers (for example) these days. That's also a good reason to wait for general purchase in my opinion... the early birds can tell me if they're seeing a lot of drift despite Steam's apparent concern.

Kinda wanna do a rant on the whole controller drift issues we're seeing more of these years, but I'll hold off on that for now.

On a completely unrelated note (sorta) this Deck would be a good opportunity for Steam to try selling those controllers of theirs again. If people are going to be buying docks for the Deck, they're going to need controllers! While I'm sure a Microsoft controller will work just fine, and I'd probably buy one of their PC controllers for this if I go the dock route, I would like some options.