The Care and Feeding of a Valve Steam Deck

When I get into a handheld device mood I don't go half way, apparently! After getting the Anbernic RG353M I started thinking about filling the "larger, more powerful device" niche. I think a Steam Deck was always in the cards, but I thought of it as a more remote purchase, as I wanted to get the "built to the hilt" model, the 512gb edition. Why go halfway?

So the initial device I looked at as a near-term get was the AYN Odin. The company isn't pro-Ayn Rand, it apparently stands for "All You Need". The Odin is a moderately powerful Android-based handheld that would emulate up into the GameCube generation. I ended up being convinced not to get it by a friend who basically said "It would really only cover two or three consoles over the Anbernic you already have, and if you are planning on getting a Steam Deck, why even bother?" This was good advice.

So I continued saving towards a $819 CDN Steam Deck. "It'll be great!" I thought. "All that storage space... and an etched screen... and... a case that has a blue dot on it? Wait, why am I getting the 512gb version??" I started scoping out replacement m.2 drives, and it was the wild west! Ebay and Ali Express listings for dubious m.2 2230 form factor drives loose in anti static bags, likely torn from dead Microsoft Surface devices. It didn't seem like there were any retail-packaged options! And then Sabrent swooped in and took pity on the poor SSD-crazy Steam Deck fan base. If I got the $499 CDN 64gb Steam Deck and a $135 CDN Sabrent 512gb m.2 drive, it comes out to cheaper than the 256gb Steam Deck model! Throw in a 512 GB Micro SD card and it's still $100 less than the 512gb Steam Deck, and you have a terabyte of storage to play with!

So I ended up pulling the trigger. And by some happy accident, everything ended up arriving on the same day! Add in a tempered glass screen protector (with a pretty cool alignment system!) and that is pretty much everything you need for your Steam Deck experience off the bat!

A pro tip for anyone looking to upgrade the SSD in their Deck: On my device the SSD retention screw was REALLY well tightened and I almost ended up rounding it out with a Philips screwdriver. I ended up switching to a fine-bladed small slotted screwdriver and that managed to break it free. Keep that in mind if you find yours hard to loosen. Other than that, replacing the SSD was remarkably straight-forward when following the iFixit guide!

Where I did end up having some troubles was when I went to do a SteamOS recovery to get the new SSD initalized. I followed Valve's guide and wrote the image to a USB stick, but was finding the boot time to get into the recovery environment taking longer than 45 minutes to load. After some googling I found a Reddit comment in /r/SteamDeck that says that it really can take forever to boot from a USB Key, and that writing the recovery image to a Micro SD card ends up being MUCH faster. Thankfully I have a 200gb Micro SD card sitting around from an old Android phone, so I wrote the recovery image to that and lo and behold it only took about 2 minutes to load up the recovery environment! Save yourself some trouble and go that route from the beginning! It would be nice if Valve mentioned this on their guide.

Once I had SteamOS on the new SSD, it was time to go through the update process, and then before doing anything I put the Steam Deck into Desktop Mode in order to install some tweaks that I had found while reading various entries on the /r/SteamDeck subreddit.

First up was the BTRFS home directory script to change the /home directory from ext4 to BTRFS. This also makes it so when you have the Steam Deck format a SD card it uses BTRFS on it as well. I decided to go this route after reading the benefits: "Btrfs with its transparent compression and deduplication capabilities can achieve impressive storage gains but also improve loading times because of less data being read. It also supports instant snapshotting which is very useful to roll back to a previous state." It sounded like a win to me, and I don't regret the few minutes and a reboot it took to get it set up.

The next script I installed was the CryoUtilities script which increases the swap file size (the maximum it will go is 16gb, and it won't recommend that if your SSD won't support a swap file that big) and the "swappiness", as well as changing some memory settings in the Kernal (setting HugePages and some compaction and defragmenting options) that all add up to faster memory access for the Steam Deck. This really helps with newer games that can bog down with the default Swap and memory options. It also recommends going into the Steam Deck BIOS and changing the minimum VRAM option from 1gb to 4gb, which also helps with newer games and higher-end emulators.

Decky Loader was the next thing I installed in Desktop Mode. Decky Loader is a plugin system for SteamOS inside Game Mode and gives you access to such must-haves as SteamGridDB (updating library entries with better images), PowerTools (for turning off SMT for a few games and Emulators that run better with that off), AutoFlatpacks (for automatically checking for updates to various flatpack installed programs), and VibrantDeck (changes the default saturation for the Steam Deck display, making it more... vibrant.) A must have, in my opinion.

There were only a few more things I needed to get configured in Desktop Mode at this point: Installing Emudeck (and getting my legally ripped from games that I own ROMS onto my Micro SD card), Getting Greenlight installed for streaming games from my Xbox Series X and installing Microsoft Edge so I could follow Microsoft's official guide to set up Game Pass on the Steam Deck. I also used Discover to install Heroic Launcher and Lutris so I can install Epic Game Store, Good Old Games and Amazon Prime Gaming titles on the Steam Deck if I so desire.

Now that all my Desktop Mode changes have been made, I restarted Gaming Mode to install some games from my library! The first one I installed and played was Aperture Desk Job, the game Valve made (and provide for free) to show off the Steam Deck's capabilities. It was a really fun and funny half hour... tech demo? Software toy? Whatever you consider it, it's totally worth playing as your first game on the Steam Deck. I also installed Vampire Survivors and Psychonauts.

I was really stoked by Psychonauts... I didn't have an Xbox in 2005 when it came out, and I've owned it in Steam since it hit the PC, I just never got around to spending much time with it. This was my chance! Except... it's not fully supported by the Steam Deck, and it shows. The camera, once you figure out how to move it with the default controls, will just orbit Raz forever. It's basically unplayable at that point. Thankfully 10 months ago someone else had the same problem and posted on Reddit about it. One of the commenters had done their own custom controller remapping in both the Steam Deck controller interface as well as in the game itself. The game gets a little finicky about changing binds the further in you go, so they even provided a YouTube video in the comments on how to unbind the camera controls properly. It's basically fixed the game on Steam Deck for me!

And that Psychonauts anecdote is sort of how your Steam Deck experience will go if you stray outside of the Valve "Works With Deck" listing. About 109 of the 900 games I have on Steam are confirmed to 100% Work With Deck. But with a little work, another 80% of my library can work. Sites like ProtonDB are invaluable for seeing how well a game will work, as well as what workarounds are required. You can even install a Decky Loader plugin for ProtonDB Badges, that will show how well ProtonDB thinks a game will work in addition to the official Valve ratings.

I've installed a few other games, Fallout 3 and New Vegas, Psychonauts 2 and The Ascent as well as some lighter fare like Stardew Valley. It has been really nice to just relax on the couch with my partner and pull up Fallout 3 or Vampire Survivors and just spend a little time playing. I think it will also be great when next we fly, as I tend to get to the airport WAY early, and having a way to kill time would be great!

One thing I am probably going to get once it's actually available: dBrand's Operation Killswitch case with travel cover. It's a durable rubber-ish grip case with a removable travel cover that protects the thumb sticks and triggers. It's a lot smaller than the travel case that the Steam Deck ships with, and would really facilitate throwing it in a bag. It just needs to be actually for sale, and not just "Available Q1 2023".

So all this to say: If you are interested in portable gaming, tinkering, Linux or even high-end emulation, the Steam Deck is a no brainer! My recommendation is to get the base model and upgrade the SSD if you feel up to it, otherwise just get as big a Micro SD card as you can and you will have a great time!