Access Alert | Metaverse, Web3, and Gaming: Valve’s Steam Deck Allows Side-Loading

Access Alert | Metaverse, Web3, and Gaming: Valve’s Steam Deck Allows Side-Loading

One of the newest entries to the game console offerings available is Valve’s Steam Deck, introduced in Feb 2022. Joining the ranks of other consoles such as Nintendo Switch, the Steam Deck breaks with walled-garden convention, and allows users to play games not only from Valve’s Steam store, but also allows users install and play games from other ecosystems as well (via its Linux desktop feature.)

Sideloading software on a machine is not a new phenomenon – anyone who has run two (or more) operating systems on a PC will probably not be impressed. However, what makes the Steam Deck unusual is that it allows you to switch to Linux, download and install the non-Steam system game that you downloaded from a third party store – such as Itch.io – and then add the game to the Steam operating system to launch and run directly from the native OS without needing to switch back to the Linux interface.

While this is a break from game access convention where users can usually only purchase and load games from one ecosystem on a console, the Valve’s experiment is not without bugs, and therefore technical questions do arise with the Steam Deck’s security.

However, there are some benefits which may be derived if the purchase and use of the Steam Deck is examined:

  1. Understanding the full market size of “all games” if a user had full access to all gaming ecosystems with no console or ecosystem limitations,
  2. Seeing the pain points where interoperability of games fail on different types of gaming rigs,
  3. Related, examining the delta between differently-consoled games – the Steam Deck allows for running PC games on the hand-held console – as this would provide information on the type of hardware requirements for more universal controllers – such as those which would be needed to build the new VR/AR input devices for the metaverse.

If you would like to commission a briefing or workshop on new technologies such as the metaverse, gaming, AR/VR, or Web3 components such as distributed ledgers, blockchains, and tokenization, contact May-Ann at mayann.lim@accesspartnership.com.

Related Articles

Access Alert: Landmark agreement reached on EU AI Act

Access Alert: Landmark agreement reached on EU AI Act

After three days of intense negotiations, late on Friday 8 December, EU policymakers reached a milestone political-level agreement on the...

11 Dec 2023 Latest AI Thought Leadership
Access Alert: Singapore launches new national AI strategy and regional LLM project

Access Alert: Singapore launches new national AI strategy and regional LLM project

The government of Singapore recently rolled out its updated national AI strategy, outlining 15 courses of action to implement over...

7 Dec 2023 Opinion
Saudi Arabia’s Race to AI Dominance with Dr. Mejdal Alqahtani – NextGen Tech

Saudi Arabia’s Race to AI Dominance with Dr. Mejdal Alqahtani – NextGen Tech

In this episode of NextGen Tech podcast, Access Partnership’s Rati Kvantaliani and Dr. Mejdal Alqahtani delve into the kingdom’s heavy...

6 Dec 2023 Opinion
Access Alert: European Institutions reach trilogue agreement on Cyber Resilience Act

Access Alert: European Institutions reach trilogue agreement on Cyber Resilience Act

Co-legislators in the EU institutions reached a trilogue agreement on the proposal for a Cyber Resilience Act following a late-night...

4 Dec 2023 Opinion