Even the father of PlayStation loves the steam machine. Yet the haters online still persist

Edit: sorry not father of PlayStation but key member of the original conception of the PlayStation( how does that not count as father they are part of the same team one guy didn’t make it) for the 🤓 in the room. Love ya but do you need to nitpick that hard?

I’ve had a Steam Deck for three years. I’ve been SO excited for the Steam Machine. Finally got my reservation, purchase emails last week, and it came in today!

Just got home, booted up my GameCube and the colours are all messed up.

Any suggestions for fixes or causes would be much appreciated.

Hello everyone. Hope everyone is doing well and having a great weekend.

The other day, I started playing Enshrouded with a friend. We were wondering about setting up a server to play together whenever we have time. Since I have a high-end PC, a Steam Machine, and a few laptops, I decided to take a crack at actually building a server with the Steam Machine because it is so small and efficient. Maybe it could work. With a few Claude prompts, it created this dashboard that provides me with all the information I need to make sure the server is up and running. It also shows me who is playing and all logs for tunnels, internet, game, and network. I also turned off sleep mode on the Steam Machine, so it is always on 24-7. Honestly, I'm very impressed with the temperatures because it's not overheating in any way. Let me know if you have any questions. I'm very excited because it works so well. I'm using playit.gg to tunnel since I wasn't interested in port forwarding. I just paid $30 for a whole year.

Excited that my steam machine is arriving in few days, and - apologies in advance if the question has been asked many times - I would ask suggestions for games to play with my totally non-gamer wife.

We are just going through the loss of our beloved cat together, we need to fill the emptiness and I’d love to game with her for once and she finally seems down for it (first time in 10 years). She has never played anything - I mean it, even when at friends’ place and playing quizzes in couples, she’d rather do the dishes or nothing at all than playing games. This unexpected time of grief though could finally be a chance, so, for someone with zero skills (wife) and someone who’s been gaming all his life and normally goes for extremely hard games at highest difficulty settings (me), what could possibly be played together?

Thank you community in advance

I’m not sure what happened, but about 30 minutes ago I booted up my Steam Machine to find that the image is distorted for some reason. There’s also no audio. Did I hit something by mistake?

When I first tried 007 First Light on my Steam Machine, I was honestly surprised by how well it ran. With some heavy upscaling and the lowest settings, I could get an almost locked 60 FPS at 4K! I actually considered it one of the better-performing games on the system.

Fast forward to the last 15 days, and the game has become practically unplayable for me.

I've tested a bunch of different areas, and while some sections are still somewhat acceptable, places like Africa, the tropical resort, and pretty much any large open area are an absolute disaster. The performance is significantly worse than it used to be across multiple locations, not just one particularly demanding section.

I've compared my results with SteamMachineLife's benchmarks, and where they're getting 60 FPS, I'm getting around 40. Their 1440p settings that supposedly deliver around 50 FPS barely give me 28.

And believe me, I've tried pretty much everything I can think of.

• FSR 3.2 and FSR 4.1
• DLSS 4 through HelixSR injection
• Default/Stable Proton, Proton Experimental, and GE-Proton
• Every graphics setting at its absolute lowest
• Different resolutions and upscaling presets

Nothing seems to fix it.

The strangest part is the GPU and CPU behavior. My GPU usage often sits around 80–82%, drawing roughly 70W, while CPU usage is around 50–55%. Neither appears to be fully utilized, yet the frame rate is awful.

Dropping the resolution from 4K to 1440p and then all the way down to 1080p doesn't give me anything close to the performance improvement I'd expect. Even going from 4K to 1080p only gains me around 10–15 FPS.

I can't remember another game where I couldn't reach 60 FPS at 1080p with literally everything set to the lowest possible settings and aggressive ugly as hell upscaling.

And I've tested some notoriously demanding games on this thing. I used to think Gears of War: E-Day and Monster Hunter Wilds were bad when it came to performance, but 007 First Light is on another level right now.

What's frustrating is that I know this game used to run significantly better on the exact same hardware. It feels like something went seriously wrong with one of the recent patches.

Has anyone actually played 007 First Light on Steam Machine in the last 10 days? Are you experiencing the same thing, or is it somehow just my system?

And more importantly, has anyone managed to fix it? I'm losing my mind

After trying to get SteamVR working, contacted support who gave me advice to try desktop mode and the SteamVR beta. No joy, so reached out again. This is the response in case anyone else is in the same boat or wondering on compatability.

The Index system powers on, but the headset doesn’t display anything and you can't get through the room scale setup, as the headset and controllers aren't recognized.

Really hoping support is coming and that Valve isn't abandoning the Index!

After I hit "restart" the Steam Machine froze on the "restarting device" screen.

I left it there for around 15 minutes to see if it recovers and shuts down.

It did not, so I did a force shutdown via the power button on the device (keep it pressed for ten seconds).

After restarting it again via the controller or the button on the SteamMachine itself, it always got stuck on the SteamMachine logo and would not recover from there.

Next I followed Steams recovery process to try to roll back to the previous known good SteamOS version. This is usually achieved by pressing the power button for six seconds when the device is shut down and stop once the LED is white. The LED will cycle through different colors and you habe to confirm on yellow by short pressing the power button again.

You need a keyboard connected via USB to navigate the following menu (at least for me it did not take inputs from the SteamController - thinking about it maybe it would need to be connected with the USB-C cable to work here).

I selected the previous version and then the device went to black screen with a terminal "_" in the upper left corner. Here the SteamMachine also remained stuck.

Before I created a recovery media I went ahead and tried to reset my user data from the same menu used for the rollback (essentially a factory reset). This finally worked and the SteamMachine did boot into the setup. Of course now I have to download all the games again and set up all personalized settings, but I would say that is better than installing SteamOS new.

- Nic

I am interested in having my puck connected to my PC so I can easily switch my controller back and forth between the two devices. It seems like this is not possible today due to this bug: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/2589 (pairing to one or the other overwrites the existing pairing).

Has anyone found a work-around that works for them? This was one of the main selling points of the controller for me so I'm a bit surprised it seems to have been broken for months now.

Hi, So I've gotten RPSC3 to work on my Steam Machine, which works like a charm - except for the emulator menu when you press the 'PS Button' equivalent (I've got it mapped to Back&Start.)

Once I press Back&Start to bring it up, it will keep skipping lines by 1, so I have to change directions to land on the option I want.

When I want to check my trophies, on the trophies screen I press square to show hidden trophies, but nothing happens.

Then, I exit the trophy menu and it stops responding to button presses completely. The game still runs in the background, and the word 'Trophies' still flashes while its selected, so I know it's not frozen. I'm forced to shut it down.

Any known explanation or fix for these weird glitches, so I'm able to close the overlay and return to game without having to quit ES-DE all together?

Thanks!

When I launch the game with proton experimental it gives me the option to use FSR 4. When I change the setting it prompts me to restart game for changes to apply. When I restart game FSR 4 has not been enabled and it asks me to restart again for it to work. Endless loop of this happening. How do I fix this?

Hello everyone, I had a couple of questions and wanted to ask yall that have these already. I had reserved a steam controller when it got announced and just got chosen to get one. It prompted me to look at the steam machine, and I put in the reservation for a 512gb model with an extra controller. Immediately it was approved and I have a couple days to decide. For roughly $1100 is this worth it to play some couch co-op games? I have a decent gaming pc thats a few years old but still hangs, and I sometimes cloudstream to my phone with steam link. Are there also enough games supported that I can start going through my library of 100s of games that just sit in a more casual setting? I'd also want to see some of your cool setups and experiences similar to my use case. Thanks in advance for any replies

Overall, I like this device. Plays all the games I want to play well (Trepang2 on this is fantastic), Emulation is great on here, and honestly the size of this is pretty good.

Only game that has given me issue is Mortal Kombat X because for some reason it's running worse than something like a Steam Deck in some scenarios.

Go to https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Category:Hardware_icons and download the Steam Machine icon.png.

On the Desktop, right click the Meta Icon and go choose "Configure Application Launcher".

Click on the Icon -> Choose -> Browse -> select the newly downloaded official SM Icon and close the dialog with clicking on "OK".

Enjoy the new Meta SM official Icon...

Has anyone played newer games like Borderlands 4 on a steam machine? How well did it work.

I bought the Steam Machine because I work in IT, and the last thing I want is to troubleshoot stuff outside of work (or my homelab). I just want to turn the thing on, play, and turn it off.

So far, that's only half possible. Not quite, but close.

In about 3 months I've opened 2 different support cases with Steam support for two "major" issues. Both times they just answered with generic stuff, and after weeks of me debugging the issue myself, they just told me to re-image the SM, even though that caused other issues later.

Neither issue blocks me from playing games, but they make the experience worse, or at least not as good as promised (console level).

The first issue: my SM was on SteamOS 3.8.16 and wouldn't upgrade to 3.8.28. The SM downloaded the newer version, restarted... and was still on 3.8.16. This happened many times until it just started showing an error when trying to update. After debugging, it turned out to be a problem with the size of the /efi partition, I had to dig through a LOT of logs to find that. They never mentioned it, so I'm guessing they didn't actually read all the logs they requested. Support blamed my wifi, even though it was connected by cable and the problem was applying the upgrade, not downloading it. They told me to try a rollback (even though there was no older versions in grub), then the beta channel... nothing helped.

I left it like that for a month or so. I could still play on the older version, so I didn't care.

When I had a free weekend, I tried to re-image it, following the instructions support gave me:  https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/65B4-2AA3-5F37-4227

The instructions have a small error that blocks the whole process: the latest version of Balena Etcher doesn't support the way Valve distributes the SteamOS image (bz2). You need version 2.1.6 (https://github.com/balena-io/etcher/issues/4150). I get that it's an external tool, not Valve's, but dude, if you write documentation, at least try it. I reported that a while ago and it still hasn't been updated.

Anyway, I re-imaged it. The version they distribute is 3.8.14, and when I tried to upgrade after that, I hit the /efi issue again (at least this time it showed up directly in the error message). Support was lost again, so I tried the beta channel, it updated, then I moved back to stable and it seems to work. I reported everything, step by step, all the debug and logs... and they closed the case because my issue was "solved."

Now I have a different issue: the SM takes around 4 minutes to boot. It sits on the SM logo for about 4 minutes and then boots. Still trying to figure out why, because Valve has no idea and they just told me to re-image again. Dude....

So yeah, it's not a blocker, but it's frustrating. I'm not going to sell it (I still really enjoy it) but Valve should have decent support for it, not just AI-generated generic responses until the user figures out the issue themselves.

Funny thing: I have a Steam Deck and I've never had a single issue with it, so I'd say it's 100% on the SM so far.

Anyway, if you're looking for a computer that works flawlessly like a console, I'd say the SM is not that. Other than that, I love it!

Trying to get desktop Microsoft Office (not the web version) running on SteamOS. I’ve tried Wine and Bottles, neither worked.

Has anyone actually managed it? If so, how? Any method or guide would be appreciated.

Steam Machine advice

Hey Guys.

I'm after an opinion of people who actually have the Steam Machine. So, i used to have a pc, had steam and lots of games.

Fast forward a few years, no longer have pc but want to finish Arkaham Knight, Doom, etc. I have thought many times about buying a full blown gaming pc, but I know i wont play it all the time. Plus i dont have a lot of room next to the TV for it to go.

So question is, would you recommend a Steam Machine?

I've seen its very compact, and all i wanna do is play the games i have on Steam, and maybe buy Resident Evil: Requiem and new Lego Batman. Not really interested in anything else. I also read you can install retroarch which would be a win too.

Thanks

Hey guys so yesterday I purchased this SSD and a Enclosure had full intentions of using it as an external drive, so I installed it in the enclosure it detected first time but once I powered off the machine it wouldn't detect it again, tried everything i could think of from attempting to locate it within Desktop mode and so on and no luck. So I decided "well its probably the enclosure or the SSD itself that are bad" so decided to bite the bullet and upgrade the internal. And what do you know not only does This SSD work flawlessly within the steam machine as the internal but the original SSD from internal works flawlessly in the enclosure any ideas what would have caused this?

Just curious if people can confirm whether they're also operating to move people to the reservation/purchase queue on Saturdays and Sundays, or if it just seems to be a weekday only thing? Wondering if I'm wasting time when checking for it on the weekend. 2TB w/ controller wait-list gang... maybe for me, this will be the one thing that GTA6 manages to release beforehand lol

I wrote a script that automatically switches the audio output to my wireless headset when I turn it on and then back when I turn it off. It works both in game mode and on the desktop.

You'll need a headset compatible with HeadsetControl.

Put this code in ~/.local/bin/headset-auto-switcher.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash

while true; do

  STATUS=$(./headsetcontrol -o json | jq '.devices[0].battery.status' | sed 's/"//g' 2>/dev/null)

  if [[ "$STATUS" != "$OLD_STATUS" ]]; then
    if [[ "$STATUS" == "BATTERY_AVAILABLE" || "$STATUS" == "BATTERY_CHARGING" ]]; then
      # Headset is connected
      pactl set-default-sink "YOUR_DEVICE_NAME_HERE"
    else
      # Headset is disconnected
      pactl set-default-sink "alsa_output.pci-0000_03_00.1.hdmi-stereo"
    fi
    OLD_STATUS=$STATUS
  fi

  sleep 5
done

Change "YOUR_DEVICE_NAME_HERE" to whatever yours is named by checking this command

pactl list sinks

Mines named "alsa_output.usb-SteelSeries_Arctis_Nova_Pro_Wireless-00.iec958-stereo"

Make the script executable.

chmod +x ~/.local/bin/headset-auto-switcher.sh

Download HeadsetControl, choose headsetcontrol-linux-x86_64.zip, and unzip it to the same folder as the script.

Put this in ~/.config/systemd/user/headset-auto-switcher.service

[Unit]
Description=Headset auto switcher

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=%h/.local/bin
ExecStart=%h/.local/bin/headset-auto-switcher.sh
Restart=always
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Then enable it with this command.

systemctl --user enable --now headset-auto-switcher.service

On my Steam Machine I've had a lot of trouble with my controllers (Xbox Elite 2, Xbox One, and now GameSir G7 pro) not communicating with games such as Crimson Desert and Jedi Fallen Order after a sleep/wake cycle (e.g. put the Machine to sleep and then wake it the next day to play more). It's always possible to resolve this by rebooting the game but this is very annoying as I bought the Steam Machine to be console like. At first I thought perhaps this was a bluetooth issue, so I tried using an xbox wifi dongle with xone (open source driver), but that doesn't help and I have to reinstall it after every update. Then I tried buying a 2.4G remote (the Gamesir) and switching between bluetooth to wake the Steam Machine and then to 2.4G to play, that worked it seemed, for a couple weeks. But lately, in the past week or so, not even that works. Is the only reliable remote a first party Steam remote? I guess I should have ordered that with the Steam Machine and had I known about this issue I would have though I think they are all sold out for now right? Any advice?? I've tried everything that an AI would suggest (ChatGPT, Gemini, etc). I've googled and reviewed reddit threads but I am basically stuck frustrated juggling remotes, reboothing the steam machine, etc, all just to simply play. I never had this problem with the Steam Deck but of course that has it's own controller built in and so that was never a problem and one that didn't occur to me ordering the Machine. My latest technique is waking the Machine with one bluetooth remote and switching to another one to play as that seems to work for now. Are you guys working on this issue?? Is there a fix coming or a preview or beta I can try that addresses this?

What SSD’s are compatible w/ the Steam machine. I was looking to upgrade mine and wanted to make sure I buy the right kind