Who Makes The Steam Deck And Where Does It Build Them?
Video game portables have been around for significantly longer than you probably think. While the Nintendo Game Boy is largely remembered as the first major handheld launched in 1989, that honor actually goes to Milton Bradley's Microvision from a decade earlier. Fast forward to the present day, and handheld gaming systems have made quite the leap forward. The highly anticipated Steam Deck debuted in 2022, promising a "console-like experience." Valve Corporation, the company behind the Steam Deck, has been active in hardware and game development and created the mega-popular digital gaming platform, Steam.
The Steam Deck offers a robust accelerated processing unit (APU ) made with the help of AMD, up to a 7.4-inch high-definition display, and refresh rates as high as 90Hz. It's difficult to find fault with this portable system. In fact, in our Steam Deck OLED review, we noted that nitpicks aside, in terms of gaming, there really isn't a better option out there.
Just like Acer's laptops, Apple's iPhone, and many other high-tech devices on the market, Valve manufactures the Steam Deck in China. This trend is largely due to shorter supply chains for faster turnaround, inexpensive labor, and manufacturers that can handle multiple processes within a single facility, ultimately reducing costs.
Who is Valve Corp?
Gabe Newell, a longtime figure in the video game industry and co-founder of Valve, currently leads the company. After spending 13 years working at Microsoft in a variety of technical capacities, Newell and colleague Mike Harrington formed Valve in 1998. The corporation then went on to craft influential games like Half-Life, Team Fortress, and Counter-Strike. Valve later developed its own game engine called Source, which is still the backbone — though highly modified — of more recent titles like Apex Legends. Other notable contributions to the gaming sphere include titles like Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Dota 2.
The company's most notable creation is arguably Steam, the largest digital games platform ever, which saw the release of 15,422 games in 2024 alone, per Statista. This online digital distribution service gives users access to a library of around 30,000 games, online multiplayer, and a host of personalized settings. In fact, there are several ways to customize your Steam profile just for you.
Valve-backed Steam has also been dipping into the hardware market, offering more than just cutting-edge portable systems. Take the Valve Index headset for instance. It's a giant leap forward in VR fidelity. When paired with in-house developed Half-Life: Alyx, it produces some truly impressive immersion.
Some drawbacks of the Steam Deck
While certainly an impressive piece of hardware, it isn't perfect, as evidenced by the biggest complaints and regrets Steam Deck owners have with the portable PC. Unfortunately, not every game on the Steam platform performs well on the Deck. Steam has taken steps to help gamers by including a section on the store page of each game, indicating if compatibility is verified, playable (may require some tweaking or concessions), or unsupported.
Another issue comes with the Steam Deck's price tag. While it is competitively priced, it's not exactly a cheap purchase. For example, there are other portable systems, such as the ASUS ROG Ally (Extreme Processor version), which can run you more than $700. However, the Steam Deck 1 TB OLED starts at $649. If you want a docking station for charging, which also allows for connecting to external screens and plugging-in peripherals, that'll be another $79.