At Valve, hardware is a fairly new wheelhouse for the company with Steam being its golden cow for over a decade already. So when the release of the Steam Deck came, it was a surprise to say the least. It wasn’t too long before that Valve did a proper sendoff for the fallout of its in-house Steam Machine back in 2019. But, 2025 has introduced new efforts like its new Steam Controller peripheral.
To pair with the latest gamepad from Valve, it also unveiled the Steam Machine – a new iteration that meets modern standards with over six times the Steam Deck horsepower. Additionally, Valve introduced the new Steam Frame which acts as a virtual reality headset as well as an alternative peripheral for non-VR titles too.
So with a new lineup of hardware set to arrive in 2026, Valve has shared new guidelines are to be in place for these systems too. Similar to the Steam Deck Verified Program, there will be improvements to the same system in place for both the Steam Machine & Steam Frame as titles will be cohesive with the two units.
“We’re expanding the Verified program to include Steam Machine and Steam Frame, and will be sharing details on how that works soon. Just like with Steam Deck, the goal is to make the work on the developer side minimal. In the meantime, if your games are already Steam Deck Verified, they’ll automatically be verified on Steam Machine,” Valve says. “For Steam Frame, we want a great experience for as many Steam games as possible, whether it’s via streaming or stand-alone.”
Elsewhere in a statement to Eurogamer, Valve PR Kaci Aitchison Boyle told the outlet that distribution is to be backed alike the Steam Deck. “Right now, we are distributing the exact same way as Steam Deck. […] For us, it’s important to just keep making Steam distribution better and better – and distribute times, add regions and things like that.
“We’ve been working on that in the background. Even just from the Steam Deck launch, I think now the experience of buying one of our harder products on the West Coast is quite a bit better than it was a few years ago. We’ve also been adding regions like Australia last year.” And, Valve in a statement to The Verge has confirmed that production on Valve Index has ceased as the company is “no longer manufacturing” the headset, designer Lawrence Yang said.
Are you interested in this new approach for Steam hardware going into 22=026?
