I used to be a huge PC gamer. For a solid portion of my life Steam has been the gaming platform for PC gamers. I personally have a small collection of 701 games on steam. In 2014 Steam released the Steam link a small device running a special flavor of Linux to allow you to stream you PC games on your TV. This device was plagued with having a weak wifi system thus requiring it to be plugged into your ethernet network. Once plugged in the device was awesome it worked really well.
![](https://i0.wp.com/blog.jgriffiths.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/1-2.png?resize=210%2C128)
It allowed you to use their customized controller or a PS or Xbox controller which worked great for many games. Last year for Christmas they said they were discontinuing the device and started selling them for $2.50 (original price was $39.99). Since them Steam has released the steam link software for Raspberry PI 3, Android, IOS, and Samsung TV’s. This departure from dedicated hardware is perhaps a realignment to the business model that best fits Steam (software) or is it perhaps something else:
- There are lots of devices fighting for the TV and HDMI slots why add more
- Hardware support is expensive and painful and replacement of devices in warranty and customer sat issues were a problem
- Going all software allows them to be a lot more agile with new features not locking them into a specific hardware capability (like the crappy wifi they put into the device)
I don’t have any insight into the real reason they moved from hardware into software but I suspect it’s a realignment to their core business of software combined with a need to move faster. The infrastructure does matter (wifi issue) but it’s also a limiting factor for new features.