Now you can turn Raspberry Pi into a Steam Link

Late last month, Valve discontinued the Steam Link and sold off its remaining stock during the Steam Autumn Sale. While the Steam Link app will continue to be supported (along with existing Steam Link hardware), the app isn't the best solution for some folks looking stream from their PC to another device. Luckily, Valve is giving users the ability to create their own Steam Link box today by bringing the app to Raspberry Pi.

More specifically, Steam Link is available on Raspberry Pi 3 and 3B+ systems running Raspbian Stretch. To install the app, Valve says you need to run the following text from a command line:

curl -#Of http://media.steampowered.com/steamlink/rpi/steamlink_1.0.4_armhf.deb

sudo dpkg -i steamlink_1.0.4_armhf.deb

Once you've done that, you'll be able to launch the app either from the Games menu or by simply running "steamlink" from a command line. The first time you run it, the full app will be installed and a desktop shortcut will be created. Keep in mind that this is only a beta for now, so you might encounter some bugs as you play.

We're still not entirely sure why Valve discontinued the Steam Link, but it seems to be part of a larger turn away from hardware in general. Earlier this year, Valve started to shift its focus away from Steam Machines, and now that the Steam Link has been discontinued, Steam's hardware tab only hosts pages for the HTC VIVE – a virtual reality headset which Valve helped produce – and the Steam Controller.

Shortly after Valve announced that it was discontinuing the Steam Link, it marked down remaining stock to a mere $2.50 during its Autumn Sale. That, as you can imagine, meant that whatever hardware Valve had left sold out quickly, so now it's impossible to get a Steam Link from the source. For those who didn't manage to get a Steam Link before it went the way of the Dodo, it seems that this Raspberry Pi app will be the next best thing, so check it out if you're looking to do some in-home game streaming.