The Steam Link & Steam Controller are on sale on Amazon & GAME

Quoting: meggermanI returned mine. Could not get a good experience with it even on a perfect 100/100 LAN.

that is a dirt cheap price though.

As Liam said, " A good network setup is required though." 10/100 is not a good network setup anymore...

On another note, following that link, they show at $36 USD... :( There are used ones for <$14, but new ones are $36. Too bad, I was gonna jump on that..

Quoting: inlinuxdudeOn another note, following that link, they show at $36 USD... :( There are used ones for <$14, but new ones are $36. Too bad, I was gonna jump on that..

That's what I see too. Bummer! I would buy it for $15 even though my Ethernet is not run to the TV area yet.

I have Steam Link and Steam Controller for more than a year.
I am not very satisfied.
Steam link has serious sound lag issues in games. There are threads and forums about it, but it is not fixed. Also there are issues with screen flckering in bigpicture mode.Then there are issues if your screen resolution is different than your tv. It's firmware is not updated anymore. There are no new updates for long time, as probably product is end-of-support.
Also, if your steam server is in another subnet, you can forget it, it will never work. Because it uses only broadcast to connect. (broadcast does not pass subnet boundaries)
Steam controller: what is the purpose of mousepad when it is completely unuseful in any game?
If I would be buying today, I would buy Pi and XboX controller. With my steam linux server, if you know how to set it all up, it does same thing as steam hardware, but better.

Quoting: prosoorI have Steam Link and Steam Controller for more than a year.
I am not very satisfied.[...]
Steam controller: what is the purpose of mousepad when it is completely unuseful in any game?
If I would be buying today, I would buy Pi and XboX controller. With my steam linux server, if you know how to set it all up, it does same thing as steam hardware, but better.

I don't understand? The mousepad (touchpad?) can be used in any game, it's fully programmable, with a lot of custom configs available to download with it already programmed to be used..

Quoting: inlinuxdude[
I don't understand? The mousepad (touchpad?) can be used in any game, it's fully programmable, with a lot of custom configs available to download with it already programmed to be used..

I don't like it.
Sometimes you have to swipe, when you would normally, press. (for left-right-up-down)
Sometimes you press and swipe, but it does not respond to touch.
Moving the screen like a mouse in 3D games with thumb finger in that position of finger? Terrible idea.
Thumbfingers can't do it. Thumbfingers do not have that finesse.
Finger hurts, can't control the game like this, I get frustrated.
It just can't do it, can't play like that.


Last edited by prosoor on 22 June 2017 at 7:11 pm UTC

Quoting: inlinuxdudeAs Liam said, " A good network setup is required though." 10/100 is not a good network setup anymore...

.. I said "100/100"

The max rate Steam link provides is H.264 High @ 50Mbit/s: 1280 × 720 @ 60 FPS / 1920 × 1080 @ 30 FPS (60 Max) . . So I have 100mbps and it is still fairly blocky on complex scenes and still has occasional stutter. Reducing to a lower setting improves massively ( but there is still occasional stutter ) and the PQ drops.

There is a reason it's £11/$15 inc Tax ( it's a £7.50/$10 box 3x cheaper than a RaspberryPi ! ). Look on the steam forums for pages upon pages of issues people have. Or just search the web. You might find some people who are happy with it ( im sure it's hardware dependent to an extent) but more are not happy with it.

And as i said earlier £11/$15 is a low price to give Valve your full home address, Not like they have had data breaches before ;) But again, that is just an observation not a judgement on people who choose to order direct from Valve. But something to consider.

The steam controller is $34.99 direct from valve/steam. That is the same cost as Amazon. However, valve wants $7.99 to ship while Amazon is willing to ship for free (even without prime)

Quoting: stretch611It may be wise to wait a little while. The Steam Summer Sale is rumored to start today in 2 hours (1pm EST, 5pm GMT) I would say there is a good chance of it being on sale directly from steam during the sale.

That being said, is it generally worth picking it up? I have a bunch of games on steam, but i know game controller support on linux can be spotty. Will it at least work with the majority of games through steam?

I've listed some issues.

What I think we should do is put up a wiki here with a list of Steam Controller supported games under Linux, with a notes category for it isn't just out of the box. Then maybe we can send that into the publishers as a 'please fix/update this for your game'?

Quoting: prosoor

Quoting: inlinuxdude[
I don't understand? The mousepad (touchpad?) can be used in any game, it's fully programmable, with a lot of custom configs available to download with it already programmed to be used..

I don't like it.
Sometimes you have to swipe, when you would normally, press. (for left-right-up-down)
Sometimes you press and swipe, but it does not respond to touch.
Moving the screen like a mouse in 3D games with thumb finger in that position of finger? Terrible idea.
Thumbfingers can't do it. Thumbfingers do not have that finesse.
Finger hurts, can't control the game like this, I get frustrated.
It just can't do it, can't play like that.

The trick is in configuring it. You can actually make it act much like a secondary analog stick. It's awesome for games that aren't intended to be plaid with a controller at all. My brother and I took turns playing Civilization VI. My only question about games like that... if it's hot seat, can you still play it with two controllers? It was kind of annoying to pass the steam controller between the two, I do have two of them. Much better than passing a keyboard and mouse between people though.