Valve is coming out with a “handheld gaming PC” for around $400:
https://www.ign.com/articles/steam-deck-valve-announces-handheld-gaming-pc-2021-release
Just wondering if you guys have done any evaluations/prototyping on the platform on which you can comment. That device is quite interesting.
It’s going to be using their SteamOS aka Linux, so probably not all that well. WoW is a DX12 engine game (Even the DX11 option basically uses the same DX12 channels. Think it’s DX11.3?). I know people can use Wine, but I’m not sure about it’s state these days and even if it could run WoW, it would probably be at half the frame rate of an equal device running native Windows.
You’d be better off using the steam deck in stream mode or something where you run the game on your PC and then stream it to the handheld. I think they said you’ll be able to do that.
Streaming it to the handheld might qualify as cloud gaming, which is against the ToS. Even just sharing your gameplay via Parsec (without controls) has seen people get actioned.
True, we’d need a blue to confirm. As far as I see it though, it’s just a wireless monitor and controller/keyboard/mouse, which aren’t violations of the ToS.
They will not confirm what will or won’t get you banned. But all forms of cloud gaming are against the ToS per the wording.
Additionally the Steam Deck has been confirmed to have a custom CPU+GPU(and possibly other custom hardware) that will require custom drivers that will likely not exist for Windows. So while Valve has announced you can theoretically install Windows on the Steam Deck they don’t recommend it and I am highly doubtful they will offer first party driver support for Windows for a device they are using to promote their SteamOS ecosystem. SteamOS also uses software called Proton(which is open source software built on top of Wine) to allow many Window’s “only” games to be played on SteamOS… but from what I have read this Proton software does not work with any kind of online game that has anti-cheat software and I do not see World of Warcraft listed under their supported games. So while this all might change over time - I doubt it will ever be a good platform for WOW.
Personally I don’t see the Steam Deck becoming a viable option for playing WOW or most MMORPGS really. Even Steam Machines weren’t - and those were suppose to be desktop PC replacements. WOW was built with keyboards and mouse controls in mind and has too many features/skills/etc to work with a controller set up. The interface was also really designed to scales well on traditional sized monitors/screens and would end up being really cluttered if downsized to fit a handheld screen.
If you want a mobile device to play WOW, or any other MMORPG on, get the best laptop you can afford and be done with it, even then you will be compromising versus a standard desktop PC. I suggest Razer’s Blade series.
This Steam Deck device seems more oriented towards being a replacement for mid-tier/last gen consoles and to rival the nintendo switch as a casual handheld device. It’s designed for FPS, racing, action, and indie games. It’s not going to be good for traditional PC game genres like MMORPGs, RTS, etc.
Excellent info, thank you so much Gangsta!
Yeah that’s why I said it would likely be better to just use it as a glorified wireless display/controller from your real PC. Especially since it has custom hardware, which I forgot to mention when I said equal device. I meant it as in equal effective FLOPS, speeds, etc.
Great info though, I don’t know a ton about Linux and all, but I do know that Wine, and other alternatives, have always been kind of spotty. I know Vulkan(successor to ogl) can work pretty well, but a game needs to be coded for it on the rendering end of things, which WoW is not. I think waaaay back in earlier WoW, you could use opengl if you used a launch flag, but I could be wrong.
the controls are much to the steam games, like a console control. Who knows since wow never really invested time to consoles, plus all the power it’ll need just to run it, not to mention if it has a cheap fan or graphics card on it, it could over-heat from just the game itself. but still seems fun but i feel for 400 dollars it might be not so viable, less you get the real expensive versions.
The only thing that changes between the different versions is memory capacity. They all have the same processor/gpu etc.
I play WoW exclusively on Linux and it works flawlessly.
It will work with Vulkan.
Many video game studios are learning Vulkan prior to the Steam Deck release.
Overwatch and World of warcraft
They will work very well.
You can use it on your Steam Deck.
Please don’t necrobump threads. Cloud gaming is still against the ToS.
It’s not cloud gaming if you’re just using the steam deck as a wireless controller and monitor. That isn’t against TOS at all…
Since the Steam Deck is basically just running SteamOS (Linux), and while WoW doesn’t support Linux, the game runs better on the same hardware on Linux than on Win 10, I’d say it probably won’t be a very big issue to run WoW on the steam deck, assuming their GPU supports Vulkan, which they would be braindead not to.
This is partially incorrect. There are plenty of games with Anticheat that run flawlessly on Linux, including just about every Blizzard game, not to mention games like RDR2, FFXIV, etc.
There are specific anticheat solutions (battle-eye, EAC and Denovu) that are specifically coded NOT to play well with WINE/Proton (IE running the windows game on Linux), but both BE and EAC already support Linux native games, and are making changes to the windows anticheat so they will no longer automatically kill themselves when they detect they are running in Proton/WINE. Those are the anti-cheats that people are referring to when they say AC doesn’t work on Linux. Plenty of AC works fine, except those that specifically make themselves NOT work.
Infact WoW runs better on Linux than on the same hardware on Windows (in my recent experience).
it was recently announced that valve is working on full windows 10/11 support and will essentially run windows just like any pc…given the fact that they are currently working with AMD to make windows run on the platform, that indicated that they will indeed have windows gpu drivers for the platform so good chance we will be able to run wow quite well on low to mid settings 60fps without the need for linux or wine at all…wooooT!!!
Anything older than a week or two is considered a necro. Not a good thing reviving old threads…again.