Do you play more than before you got your deck?
Do you play the same kinds of games, or do you play different types of games now?
Do you still play at the same times or places, or have those changed?
Are there any other significant changes to your playing habits?
I went from buying and never playing PC games to playing them pretty often.
My gaming PC is in the basement. I rarely find the time to hole up down there with kids and family life. But I can hang in the living room on my couch and play now. Game changer.
Ironically enough, it’s led to me playing more games on the living room television! The steam deck helped me adapt to playing with a gamepad, as opposed to mouse and keyboard.
Until they come out with a Steam Controller 2, I will say the best gamepad for steam is the Dualsense (a Dualshock 4 also works). It’s got one touchpad instead of two, but Steam lets you map the left and right half separately, which covers my primary use cases. I also installed the RISE4 remap kit, a hardware mod that adds paddles on the back of the controller which can mimic any face button. Not as good as having actual new buttons, but it does mean I can run and jump without taking my thumb off the right stick.
That does sound really good, I avoid some games when playing docked because of missing back buttons/touchpads.
Currently I’m using stadia controllers, which work pretty well but don’t have any extra input options.
I only bought the Steam Deck so I could play Windows games without having to give money to Microsoft, or pirate Windows. I’d much rather play games on macOS, but unfortunately, there are way too many games that don’t run on macOS (or used to run, but don’t anymore).
Now that Apple has their own Windows compatibility layer in the form of the Game Porting Toolkit, I don’t use my Steam Deck as much as I did.
@OfficialThunderbolt @Fubarberry wait, does this work on M2 airs? How can one play windows games on the MacBook Air?
With Whisky. It requires macOS Sonoma, which launches next week.
@OfficialThunderbolt what’s this for?
Whisky will allow you to run Windows apps, including most games, on a Mac without needing a VM or Boot Camp. It’s basically a front end to Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit, which requires Sonoma, so Whisky also requires Sonoma.
And while most games work well, games with a launcher will most likely fail, as will games that use kernel-level anti-cheat or some other DRM on top of Steam’s. Steam works well with Whisky, but Epic’s store doesn’t work for some reason.
@OfficialThunderbolt have you tried running windows games on Mac? Like a typical windows game on steam or something?
Yes.
I play way more retro games due to packages like EmuDeck being so slick.
- Not really, but what device I play on has changed, more Deck now than main gaming PC.
- I play more indie games and single player games now. More emulated games like my old GBA ones mostly.
- Mostly same times, late lol. But around the house far more because of the portability.
- I play much more casually now. Less sweaty competition online, more zone out & chill games.
I’ve played my Steam Deck exactly once since I bought it when it first released.
Serious question. Why?
I’ve never felt any need to use it. It doesn’t do anything my daily driver doesn’t except be a handheld console, and I don’t go anyplace where portability is needed. I bought it because it was a cool new tech thing, but I’ve never found a use for it.
Honestly I’m kind of in the same boat. Most things I want to play usually are things better done with m+k or otherwise intensive games that won’t play well on the deck. But my partner loves it and has cleared multiple 100+ hour RPGs with it, and that alone was worth the price of admission.
Weird response, but I’ll bite. Sitting at home on my couch is not a place I can play on my desktop computer, so I can play some fun indie games on a machine I can pause and suspend gameplay anywhere and resume at anytime. I literally cannot do that on my PC without using some serious docker type stuff on my games which is not worth it.
I have a fair amount of casual games that I don’t play on my PC as I prefer more indepth games when I’m at my PC. The SteamDeck provides a perfect use case for these games. Anyways, I’m surprised. I also setup GOG and Epic on my SteamDeck through the Heroic Launcher which even lets me play some old school games which is endless fun.
I’m not making any claims that the Steamdeck is bad or not useful for anything. I’m merely stating that I personally have found no use case for it in my own life. I’m happy that you and others have.
Another use that I have found for it is as multiplayer platform on-the-go, either watching movies, video games, or just as a handheld laptop haha. The desktop mode is very cool if you haven’t checked it out.
It’s made me sometimes wish I had one when I was playing games.
I’ve installed games on the deck that I thought were interesting but I wasn’t in a rush to play right away. And instead of those games getting forgotten I ended up actually playing them.
It’s made my Steam collection viable again. I had to box up the PC when we had our second kid, and with it went 400+ games. The Deck has totally gotten me back into that ecosystem again, which is surely what Valve want.
On a personal level it’s totally killed my Switch off (Nintendo exclusives aside). I also find myself playing most of my games on the 'Deck right now, because having the flexibility is apparently something I really enjoy.
I’ve been playing more single player games. My PC has mostly been for multiplayer stuff with friends - Siege, Deep Rock etc. My Deck has opened up time to a load of Single Player things - AAA things like Spiderman, Control, Mad Max and indie stuff like Black Skylands.
Plus I had a load of work travel in the first part of this year. The Deck made hotel rooms much more pleasant!
My first machine was a commodore 64, then Nes, SNES, Master system, Megadrive, N64, OG Xbox then Stopped gaming after the Xbox 360 end of life. Don’t have time to get setup in front of a TV or monitor or the inclination.
The switch came out and I got a chance of one cheap. Bought it loved that I could pick it up put it down and lock it so it was exactly where I left the game last time. BOTW was great played Skyrim again then got bored of the gimmick games with not many adult titles and Nintendo’s poor updates. And the joycons are completely shit.
The switch languished in a drawer for ages then I gave it to my 7 year old nephew.
I heard about the deck taking preorders so got my name down.
As someone who primarily plays 5 year or older RPGs it is an absolute dream machine. I can play it at work when I’m quiet, I can play it with the TV on in the background, I can lie in bed with it.
Put it this way if I broke the deck right now I’d go out and buy another tomorrow.
I really hope there will be updates to get starfield playable.
I will never go back to consoles that aren’t handheld again.
Games are same and playtime is same. Linux gamer even before steam deck.
My neck is more often sore.
I’ve started playing PC games again! Previously I’d lock myself away in my gaming room at my PC and my partner and cats would never see me, so I stopped doing that. Now I can sit on the couch with them and game while we watch a show together. I also play games on my lunch at work, being able to play Starfield during downtime has been a dream come true.
I work from home 3 days a week. I have a decent battlestation, 5800X and RX6700 with a 38" widescreen and homebuilt ergosplit on a sit-stand desk. During work hours I use a KVM so I can use my work laptop with my setup.
When I built it out, I wasn’t prepared for how little I would want to game at that desk.
The only gaming I did since I built that PC was sitting on my couch with an old Steam Link and Steam Controller. It didn’t matter that the screen wasn’t as good or that I had to timeshare the TV with the rest of the family. It was a change of scenery that let me leave work behind.
Since getting a Steam Deck, I’ve finished more games than I have in years. Not only can I game away from my desk, I can hang out with the rest of the family without disturbing them. And if someone needs my attention, I can put it to sleep without worrying about save points or load times.
i don’t have a steam deck but now i play on my pc with linux instead of windows lmao
