If you thought I was critical enough of Valve in my Steam Deck review, well, you might want to strap on your seat belt, because I’m not done yet. (That being said, I did make a few clarifications earlier this week about some wrong assumptions that I had made, so please give that a read if you haven’t already.) The Steam Deck UI is tightly integrated into SteamOS, giving the Deck a console-like experience with gamepad navigation across different menus, not only giving PC gaming a breath of fresh air, but also – thanks to Valve’s efforts – getting Linux into the hands of more and more people.

I’ve noticed some folks over on r/SteamDeck can’t get Halo Infinite to run on their Deck. Well, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to get it to run. Thankfully, it’s not as complicated as it was in the past. The game has technically been playable on AMD and NVIDIA GPUs since the past three weeks, but on AMD it required Glorious Eggroll’s custom Mesa patch in order for the in-game textures to properly render.

My acquaintance Gardiner Bryant just posted a video going over the differences between the review unit of the Deck he got in February, and the Q3 one he received not too long ago. Mind you, though the differences are subtle, the Q3 Deck is better in just about every way. Here’s what I’ve extracted from the video – the Q3 Deck has the following advantages: it’s a whopping 0.2 ounces lighter it has a more distinct texture on both the chassis and the trackpads.

UPDATE (7/22): I’ve put out a guide for those of you who can’t get the game to run, plus what I’ve found to be the best settings for a smooth 60 FPS. Earlier today GloriousEggroll released GE-Proton7-26. Though this update is rather minor compared to 7-25, it nevertheless fixes a regression in vkd3d-proton that prevented Halo Infinite from going past the initial screen. Low and behold, the game not only runs, but the textures have been fixed!

New beta Deck client shipped out just a few hours ago. This adds the Sucheng keyboard for Tradional Chinese, adds an Achievements page to the Steam overlay, prevents the annoying “You have unclaimed digital rewards!” notification from appearing every time you turn the Deck on, fixes Night Mode from automatically turning on when it’s set to OFF, and brings improvements to the OSK when in desktop mode (should now properly show up or disappear when the appropriate button is pressed).

While Steam Deck HQ is only a month old, it has quickly become my favorite go-to site for checking all things Steam Deck-related. Though it originally covered game reviews and what the best settings are for each, the site has evolved into much more than that. It’s also a place where you can get news and guides. And the content will expand even further with YouTube videos. So I wanted to interview the website owner, Noah, and get his thoughts on the Steam Deck, why he created Steam Deck HQ, and what we can look forward to as far as future content.

While it’s debatable whether MultiVersus will be a Smash killer, I’m happy to report the game now runs flawlessly on the Steam Deck. Previously, running the game was technically possible, but you would get kicked almost immediately if you joined an online match, due to EAC. Evidently, Warner Bros. listened to community feedback; after testing today’s open beta, I can confirm the kicking is no longer a thing. The game also has 16:10 support.

Small update for the Steam Deck has rolled out today as beta, primarily focusing on bug fixes. Patch notes are as follows:

• Fixed a bug where some flatpak applications (like Edge) couldn't successfully quit - Fixed some issues with claiming Steam Deck digital rewards - Updated keyboard behavior for improved fast typing on trackpad and touchscreen. (pressing a key while holding another key will now commit the held key instead of waiting for first to release) Note that this is a beta client update and, as such, you will need to be opted into the Beta or Preview update branch in System Settings in order to download it.

There’s kind of been a reason why I’ve held off from writing a review of the Steam Deck. I’ve had the device for a little longer than three weeks now, and in the process I’ve covered things such as how it handles Super Smash Bros Melee, how it handles the Portal series in comparison to the Nintendo Switch port, written a guide on how to get plugins installed and running, and covered the numerous updates that have come to the device.

Luxtorpeda is a Steam Play compatibility tool for allowing a certain set of games on Steam (mostly pertinent to older titles) to run using a native Linux engine, rather than having to use Proton for a Windows-only game. For instance, Ocean’s Heart has a Windows-only icon on the Steam store page. But with Luxtorpeda, we can force the game to use the native Linux version of Solarus, the engine that powers the game.