8 Years later my Steam Link is still getting regular updates

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.

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.

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.

8 years later and I still haven't used it once

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.

I love mine. It does one thing, and it does it well. That's exactly what I wanted from it

That's the thing about Valve. They really know and do software as good as anyone else in the business.

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.

This post reminded me that I have a Steam Link. Somewhere.

Feels like a nice symptom of Valve's flat structure.

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

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.

But…but…vAlve doEsNt suPpoRt iTs haRdWare

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.

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.

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.

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

Labor of Love

I love when old hardware gets update still.

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

What do you use it for?

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 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.

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?

And what are those updates?

Are they adding new features? Patching security? Fix bugs? Or just update their DRM with new encryption codes?

My steamlink always updates when i power it on. Its like the updates are not persisted anymore. There is nothing new being added.

I don't know what it is but I don't get sound on mine, at least for most games.

I wish they'd still sell those as hardware units. Same with the Steam controller.

Yeah still use mine! Best way to stream from my PC upstairs to my TV downstairs!

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

I still use mine just about everyday.

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!

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.

That's amazing! I wonder what things are left to polish or update 🤔

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

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.

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?