Games @lemmy.world

1y ago

8 Years later my Steam Link is still getting regular updates

220 comments

Wow, when they were practically giving those away, I figured they were washing their hands of it. It's amazing that it's still being supported.
- Mine was $1! I love it. I just bought a wireless mouse and keyboard for it, because it's honestly just a great way to stream stuff. Now my computer can be in my living room, and my office at the same time!
  
  I've got one I never hooked up. Can you just control the computer in general or do you only get access to steam? I wanted to jellyfin with it maybe
  
  I remember that sale and annoyed I didn't buy one. At the time I thought I'd never use it. Fast forward a few years and I occasionally use Steam Link on a Raspberry Pi, so I would have used it. Oh well.
- Think about it though. Probably some overlap with the deck. And hiring one dev very part time to keep this thing alive is nothing for them. Which makes the steam deck way more lucrative
  
  Tell me you don't know how valve works without telling me you don't know how valve works.

I just read in Wikipedia that Valve is privately helded.
There must be something magical in the fact that they don't need to feed their shareholders with mountains of cash every quarter, and actually focus on their customers, as happened in this post.
- Fun fact, they used to be public but Gabe took it back private after realizing how shitty it was having to answer to shareholders.
  
  That's an interesting piece of info
- True, private companies are generally more focused on customer satisfaction, but that can suddenly change, for instance when the owner dies, and the new owners don't share the same ideals.
  Private companies have a certain single point of failure built-in by having often just one or sometimes a small number of owners.
  Nobody really knows what will happen when Gabe dies.
  I just hope that valve becomes a worker cooperative... That would be the most stable form of company that probaly stays focused on customer satisfaction long term, since workers tend to favor providing long-term profits via good service instead of short term gains, for high frequency traders.
  
  Gabe-AI, it's the only one I'd trust to run Valve. We need to preserve his personality starting today!
- And the fact is they still make a mountain of cash every quarter, just by focusing on their customers.
  
  I don’t know about that. They run one of the most predatory examples of gambling in gaming.
  The new EU ruling really brought to light how big of a problem the CS:GO gambling is.
  
  And the fact is they still make a mountain of cash every quarter, just by focusing on their customers.
  "Win-Win" for the win!
  
  but what about the latest investment fad like AI or NFTs? Won't they think of the poor scammers?
- to be fair Sony still updates the ps3, i think
  
  Also to be fair they tried to kill PSN store on the PS3 but the resulting backlash made them realize to do so would kill customer faith in the PS4 and PS5 PSN stores and so they backed off. Nintendo could only get away with it because they already trained us not to trust their online stores and buy physical only. Since Steam doesn’t have a physical option they need to play their cards right.
  
  They only do it to make sure the latest Blu Rays work AFAIK. this is also how they get the decryption keys for the latest movies lol
- Twitter (sorry, X.com) is also privately held now so it's not always a happy story :/
  
  Ofc not, what you need to show is a public company that does not fuck over customers
- Easy answer. Valve prints money.

That's actually really awesome.

I bought one during the clearance sale for the price of shipping, assuming that it would be abandoned but maybe still useful as a low-power linux server. I guess I ought to set it up and take advantage of it.
Thanks, Valve, for not letting these things become instant e-waste.
- I thought this too, but unfortunately in terms of modding and general use they are very limited, afaik. When I looked into it, it boiled down to: There's an sdk to develop stuff for it and you can get root access but good luck trying to replace the os or anything like that. That being said, this is what I remember from ~2 years ago, so if it can be customised more now, please let me know. I kinda bought 2 in hopes of being able to do that :D
  
  I meant that I ought to use it for its intended purpose after all.
  (But yes, I would still like the option of replacing the OS.)
  
  Why would you need sdk? It's literally linux box. Just use GCC.
  
  I thought you could literally install sunlight/moonlight on it and have an even better experience. I never got around to trying after it got recommended to me

8 years later and I still haven't used it once
- Every time I've tried to use it, I've either had to head downstairs to the PC to fix something or had terrible lag and artifacting making it unusable for even turn based games like Xcom...
  But I still love that little box. I've got two of them and I have Steam Controllers to pair with them but I've never had luck with them. Wired, wireless, no luck.
  
  Have you tried Moonlight? It's an open source streaming alternative software that you can install on Steam Links, streams using Nvidia's GeForce Experience as the broadcasting part and Moonlight receives it.
  https://moonlight-stream.org/
  
  Every time I’ve tried to use it, I’ve either had to head downstairs to the PC to fix something or had terrible lag and artifacting making it unusable for even turn based games like Xcom…
  That's not normal. While Steam Link is a bit older by now and as a result there are constrains like streamed resolution, your problems look more likely connected to your network than Steam Link itself. Digital Foundry talked about PlayStation Portal recently which also includes a two minutes chapter about best practices that apply to other game streaming devices as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEoo_gbOBYo
- I use mine all the time. It's a great peice of hardware

Maybe the Steam Link and Controller weren’t as popular as Valve hoped they would be, but damn everyone who still has them seems to love them. Maybe I’m biased because I still have my controller and love it, and I gave away my Steam link because my Deck can do that too, but my friend who received the link is loving it.
- The Steam Controller is one of the best pieces of hardware I ever bought. There's something incredibly chill about playing strategy games not originally meant for controller on the couch. I also genuinely like fiddling with cool setups and radial menus for it.
- I loved my stream controller so much I recently bought a second on eBay
- I never really liked the Steam Controller when it first came out. My Dad was actually the one that had gotten them and even he seemed to have set them aside after awhile, as they just collected dust for ages after that. I picked them up from him a few years back and I've started using them with my Steam Deck and they're actually pretty nice, I get it now, though I kind of wish they still had analog sticks. They still work fine though after all these years, while every set of Xbox-style controllers I keep getting for my kids last for maybe 6 months before they're useless.
- Bruh steam controller goes for 200$ idk what you talking bout
  
  Valve was selling their controllers for $5 to blow out the stock (one per account).
  ETA: https://www.theverge.com/good-deals/2019/11/26/20984123/valve-steam-controller-discontinued-sale-price
  
  I’m talking about how Valve dumped them for $5 a piece because they clearly weren’t selling enough.
  
  It's technically a collectors item now

I love mine. It does one thing, and it does it well. That's exactly what I wanted from it
- Eh, I've had issues with mine being able to stream 1080p@60fps with my pc on wifi without it lagging like crazy, and my desktop had a strong AX connection to the AP (and speed/latency/jitter tests to and from the router were perfectly normal).
  It's definitely starting to show its age, but it's great if you're streaming at 30fps.
  
  I would definitely not recommend a wifi connection for this

That's the thing about Valve. They really know and do software as good as anyone else in the business.
- Let's not pretend alt tabbing a source game was possible pre 2013
  
  True, but the Steam overlay is a good workaround
- Not like anyone else, they're unique.

Don't even need the hardware anymore. The Android app is really good on its own. I can even play games while not on my own home network with minimal lag so long as I am on 5G or wifi. I use it to play a few rounds of Civilization when waiting at the doctor.
- Kolanak, I've seen you comment on so many threads on Lemmy. I thank you for A. Being an active commenter, B: having valuable opinions and instigating discourse and C: having your name in emoji format so people clearly see you.
  Well done.
  
  Emoji format? What client you on?
- I sideload the app onto fire sticks. Works fine for the most part. Played games like plateup and RPGs without issue
- Android app is so buggy though.
  Right now for whatever reason it refuses - on two different android TVs - to stream from either Steam Deck or desktop (for Steam Deck I get sound but black screen, for desktop it genuinely crashes). Tried with Steam Link hardware and it's fine for some reason. But that's just the latest issue.

This post reminded me that I have a Steam Link. Somewhere.
- Somewhere, someplace, steam link is there
- I put mine in the original packaging and donated to one of these gifts for kids collections.. in hind sight that product was so niche especially being pc gaming is probably quite rare in low income families I can't imagine any kid being happy with it so I feel a bit guilty!
  
  I teach lower income students and they love technology as much as the rest of us. They usually opt for used electronics and a lot of them are getting scammed into buying secondhand enterprise rigs that are converted into shitty gaming PCs, but don't worry, you made some nerd's day.

This post reminded me that it's supposed to be used for gaming. I've had mine since it was first released and have always used it to turn my TV into a PC monitor to watch YouTube and Movies from my bed

Feels like a nice symptom of Valve's flat structure.
- Feels like a nice symptom of Valve’s flat structure.
  Elaborate?
  
  I was curious about it too and there was a paper about it with the following summary:
  Valve is a “flat” company without a management hierarchy or traditional boss roles: instead of top-down organization and management, Valve employees are free to work on whatever projects they choose and to convince other employees to join collaborative groups. Decision-making is thus “democratized” rather than centralized in key management positions. This peculiar structure, or lack thereof, seems to challenge conventional ideas about organization not only in the video game business but also business in general.
- Maybe, but it's far more likely it's just dependancies and other 3rd party library packages being updated.
  The Steam Link Linux package also still gets the rare update now and then on my old Ras Pi, but mostly these days it's just the Android app being given bug fixes (even though the last one is from October).

If you have proper full continuous deployment infrastructure setup then you can do minor updates of things like dependencies automatically. I'd guess that's what's happening here.
- Amazing how many products just don't.

But…but…vAlve doEsNt suPpoRt iTs haRdWare
- I've never seen people say this, but if they do, fuck em
- It depends what you mean by support. They made the Steam Link for 3 years and have not made it for 5 years.

I just wish it worked on modern linux.
spent an entire weekend trying to get steam link to work only to find out it doesnt work on wayland.
- I give it eight months. Wayland support is getting better every week and some major distros plan to drop X11 by the end of the year.
  
  Well, there's always the possibility of a Wayland compatibility upgrade. I know it's a lot, but these guys are nerds hard-core about this, and thank God for that, too.
- Give Sunshine (host) and Moonlight (client) a try.
  Haaaaaands down better quality and latency.
  I would love to see Valve embrace these projects and integrate them for streaming in app at least, maybe even run on Links?
  
  Ooh! I've been looking for something like this, but didn't know the right words to google.
  
  ~~Does Sunshine/Moonlight only work on PCs that have Nvidia cards, or also those with AMD video cards?~~
  Read further down to this comment that had a link to the product page and what it supported.
  Thank you to those who had already responded.
- The Deck uses Wayland so that doesn't make sense. And I've definitely streamed to my laptop to test a few years ago and it worked well enough.
- Steam Link is a piece of hardware in this case, not the software you are discussing (I would guess?).
  
  neither work with wayland.
- One of the primary reasons for moving to Wayland is it's native security when it comes to screen sharing. To properly screen share you need xdg-desktop-portal installed. You should then get a selection window on the server side asking which window you want to share over the steam link session with the client.
  A lot of people just use moonlight/sunshine now though instead of steamlink.
- It probably doesn't work on your wayland compositor. Screencasting still is not part of protocol.

This post got me to dig mine out after all these years.
After literally 99 updates, I got it running and again and played some games from the couch. It was a good time! I don’t know why I packed it away.
Valve needs to update this little dude, but they never will, of course.
- Most smart devices have steam link streaming built in now...which is sadly why they retired the hardware
  
  I wouldn't say 'Most'.
  Neither of my 3 different brand Smart TVs nor either of my Roku models have Steam Streaming.
  
  Oh yeah, that's a fair point.

I love the concept of them, but I've never had an enjoyable experience on mine. Always lag, host client crashing, or some other crap stopping me from playing.
This is on a Cat 6a network too. Never had it on wifi.
- Try installing https://moonlight-stream.org/ on the Steam Link. Uses Nvidia's GeForce Experience to stream from your PC; works a lot better in my experience.
  
  Can concur. The hdmi cable to my living room broke, and I tried steam link on my shield but it was way too much input lag. With moonlight however I cannot tell the difference anymore, it honestly feels as direct as having it connected via hdmi. This is with direct pc - cat6 - router - cat6 - shield though.
- It’s fine for games that don’t require super fast reflexes. I played 99% of Final Fantasy X on mine. The only things I needed to move to my PC for were the (infamously difficult to begin with) races. The Persona games also ran fine on it. But it’s worth noting that all of those are turn-based, so I’m not worried about a noticeable slight input lag. I absolutely wouldn’t use it for something like a shooter or fighting game where reflexes matter.
  My fiancée actually prefers when I use my Steam Link, because it means we can cuddle on the couch while I play. So she doesn’t feel like gaming is coming “between” us like it does when I’m at my PC and she can’t snuggle up next to me.
  I used to have really fucking bad sporadic lag, (I would dip to less than 1FPS for probably 15-30 seconds at a time, every 5-10 minutes) but a recent-ish update (in the past few months, though I can’t remember exactly when) fixed that. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t any weird network traffic on my end that was causing it; It was just the Steam Link failing to keep up every now and then. But whatever they did in that update resolved things, because it’s rock solid these days.
  
  I was able to play crash Bandicoot 1-3 on my steam link with steam controller and I was having no problem to run diamond times on hardest maps. I wouldn't play counterstrike or dota on steam link, but I almost never had delay problem with my steam link.. it's interesting how many people had different experiences. I was even raiding classic wow on steam link.
- Ive had lag once using the Raspberry Pi variant and that was due to using a poor quality usb cable, it was under powering the unit. Aside from that it's been surprisingly fast on ethernet and WiFi.
- I actually got very mixed results with mine. Ultimately the app version is just more stable for some reason. I did get periodic lag, but interestingly I had the most problems with graphically intense games. Steam link has absolutely no problem, if my PC can run it smoothly it looks great on the app too. But on the hardware version it struggled to keep up and I got periodic crashes. Weird.

That's because unlike most other businesses steam understands that if you want people to keep buying your products, you need to provide a decent service
- Which is why you can't buy a Steam Link, amiright?
  I use mine regularly, and I would be sad if it completely breaks.
  
  I own and like the steam link, but the reason they don't sell it anymore is because the steam link app is on most smart devices now, and if your TV doesn't support it, you can buy a streaming stick that does for like $30, give or take depending on sales. And those devices are more portable (less wires) and more versatile than a steam link.
  Any competitive price for the steam link would be less than what Valve can produce them for. Weren't they selling it for $5 at the end? Pretty sure I picked mine up for $10 or less. Steam can't show ads to subsidize the price of the hardware like every other smart device does.
  
  So, a product that has been discontinued doesn't mean that it needs to lose software support, was the point I was trying to make. It would be nice if they still sold them but still good that the people that own them can continue to use them and are receiving security updates for them.
  I think it's important that companies like google, samsung, apple, etc are held to at least this standard where products don't need to be changed unless they actually break, rather than forcing software changes that break or reduce effectiveness of the product to try and force the consumer to produce e-waste and buy a new product.
  Nothing wrong with wanting new products, however that should be a personal decision made at a personal level by a consumer not one forced onto them by a company who designed products using the planned obsolescence doctrine.

I love when old hardware gets update still.

Labor of Love

The hardware that became an app, good thing it has updates yet.

Mine never worked very well. I'm assuming it's very dependent on which GPU you have.
Had much better results with Moonlight and Sunshine.
- I could not get either to work. Then discovered my root issue was my firewall so have up.

What do you use it for?
- As someone who continues using a Steam Link for its original intended use of game streaming, this strikes me as a somewhat silly question. Haha.
  Maybe I am just not adventurous enough with mine to consider other uses?
  
  I often use it to watch Hulu and such on my tv, as even though the tv has its own app, I can't put an adblocker on those, but I can use my browser through the steam link and have all the ads blocked. Just one other type of use for it!
  
  I'm surprised it still gets support ans I guess treaning games from pc rather than plugging pc in just isnt as common in general.
- When I had one it was great for streaming games to the living room from my PC. There are so many great couch party games on the PC and by using the link we could get controllers and video to stream perfectly.
  
  Did you not ever have to have a controller plugged in the host and Link per player? That's a quirk I've faced using my laptop as the Steam Link device, streaming from my desktop.
- I use mine all the time. I use it to play games and watch TV/movies through my computer. I plan on using it for my kids account because games are so much cheaper on PC and have support forever.
  I can plug any of my controllers in or m&k and have zero issues doing whatever I want.
  It's a shame it died so quickly.
  
  I wanted to like it. I used it for couch co-op a handful of times but always had so many issues. After troubleshooting it for the 10th time, it became ewaste and I just setup chairs next to my small computer monitor. It's a shame.
- I still have my old one. I used to use it to stream Steam to my living room TV, since my gaming PC was in my office on my second floor. The wife wanted to hang out, but she'd always be distracted on her phone and there wasn't room in my office for us to comfortably sit together, so I'd game from the TV while she sat with me on the couch.
  I haven't used the physical Steam Link in a few years, though. My newest Smart TV has a Steam Link app on it, which does everything the physical device did. Maybe that's why the physical one still gets updates; because the software is still being supported as a TV app.
  
  Why I'm surprised there is still a use for it. But also not really since older hardware doesn't mean bad hardware, just uncommon.

I swapped over to a Sunshine host (non-NVidia version of Moonlight) + Moonlight client combo for game streaming and it absolutely blew Steamlink out of the water for me. Went from lag, resolution switching and disconnects to buttery smooth on my Pi400 at 1080p.
- I understood some of these words...
  So you're running linux alternatives on the raspberry made for TV?
  
  Sunshine is the open source version of gamestream server, moonlight is the client. It runs on all major desktop OSes.
  https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine
  
  Host PC is AMD graphics which the host end of Moonlight (the game streaming tool) doesn't support, but there is an open source fork called Sunshine that you can use instead. It's a Windows 10 machine, so no need for Linux and is wired to my LAN with a powerline adaptor.
  Client is my Raspberry Pi 400, running Moonlight, on the latest version of PiOS with my controllers bluetoothed. It's wired to my LAN with a network switch and connected to my TV.
- huh I was using the nvidia shield and switched to sunshine when they shut it down. had heaps of issues then went to steamlink which seemed better. last game I tried was slow as though, maybe I should give sunshine another run

Love mine, use it constantly to play games in the living room!

Same! That thing is so useful.

I love this little piece of hardware.

Wow , Valve is really an amazing company!!

I bought one back in the day but always had input/video lag. Does yours work smoothly?
- I use one and it's pretty smooth. Depends on the connection though. Definitely needs wired connection.
  
  Or a strong wifi network. I have a bunch of wired access points and was able to get really smooth streaming
  
  It’s been so long since I used it that I can’t remember if I had it wired or wireless. I’ll have to break it out and try it again.
  
  I have lag even with wired connection.
- I had to tweak some settings on my PC and lower the output to 720p but mine seems to work pretty well with that.
- Maybe you need to put your tv in gaming mode so that the refresh rate is adapted to the input. Had the same problem with my AppleTV

And what are those updates?
Are they adding new features? Patching security? Fix bugs? Or just update their DRM with new encryption codes?
- Here you go.
  
  Man, I love Valve.
  
  ~~Latest update is 2021. My steamlink updates everytime i power it on, its like the updates are not persisted anymore.~~
  Edit: i was dumb.

I don't know what it is but I don't get sound on mine, at least for most games.
- After seeing this post, I got my Link out and tried it. I initially didn't have sound either, but this comment on the bad site helped me resolve it. TLDR: re-installing the steam speaker driver thing.
  https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/18852nj/comment/kbj5cwc/
- Sometimes my pc gets confused on which sound output it's supposed to use. Have you tried alt-tabbing out of the game on your pc and setting the sound output to the steam link?
  
  It's been some time so I don't remember what I tried. I'll give it another try some time.
- It's dumb, but sometimes windows refuses to acknowledge that audio can work if you don't have an audio device currently "active".
  On my old computer I just plugged a headphone extender into the back and that fixed it, since it saw there was a connected audio device, even though there weren't even headphones attached.
  I'm sure there was a better fix, but a cable on the back wasn't really bothersome.

My steamlink always updates when i power it on. Its like the updates are not persisted anymore. ~~There is nothing new being added.~~
- Ah, the Discord strategy of updates

I wish they'd still sell those as hardware units. Same with the Steam controller.
- Sadly, they can't sell the controller anymore because they got patent trolled.
  
  They must've dealt with it somehow, otherwise the steamdeck would be in violation as well.
  
  I'm unsure what I'm going to do when my steam controller breaks. No other controller even comes close, including the Xbox controller that I consistently see recommended. The gyro especially is so fucking nice, and AFAIK nothing else has one that works the same way.
  I can't believe people shit on the controller when it was released, they had no clue.

I still use mine just about everyday.

Yeah still use mine! Best way to stream from my PC upstairs to my TV downstairs!
- This is my exact usage case.

Uh! I gotta find mine and try this! Thanks!

I wish I had one of these 😩
I used to run the service through the app on my Samsung TV and it ran mostly ok before Samsung pulled the plug on it last year.
I tried setting up a second PC to run it through but I get awful frame loss even on a wired connection, and even in the Steam menus!
- They’re like 30 bucks on eBay.
  
  Ya, I've thought about it. I've always figured they'd stop working at some point, but then a post like this shows up, heh.

Valve being a cool company might be true and all but I think there’s also the real reason that steam makes money by selling games, and making it easy for users to stick to gaming (with steam) ensures ongoing income. Imagine someone who now loves gaming on TV but being annoyed by their broken steam link - what are they going to buy next? A PlayStation and years without a game sold to them.

That's amazing! I wonder what things are left to polish or update 🤔
- It's got little bits in it that connect to the network and handle basic encryption and such. Over time, those libraries will all have small bugs fixed in them, and it's important enough to update them that it's worth updating the device, regardless of any other changes to make sure it can keep talking to the steam client on the computer and stuff.

I love mine. Had audio streaming break for me but switched my desktop to Linux. Back to perfect function.

Oh, I have one of those laying around somewhere. Need to get a power adapter for it. Or I guess a USB to barrel adapter would do?

I have one of these that I never use. Good to know they're still getting updates. I do have a potential application for mine in the near future.

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