Steam Machine and Steam Frame shipping "this summer", Valve now rolling out verification systems

Valve gave us the latest teaser for the Steam Machine and Steam Frame which they said are now shipping "this summer" in a post about their verification systems.

So we've gone from early 2026 around the original announcement, to it arriving sometime in the first half of the year due to component shortages and pricing and now sometime "this summer". Can't be easy to do a launch like this with everything going on - and we still do not know the pricing.

The Steam Deck Verified program has now officially expanded to include both systems, and we already knew mostly what to expect from this from Valve's GDC talks earlier in the year. For Steam Machine, it's basically the same as the Steam Deck - as Valve said: "If your game already runs well on Deck, it will also run well on Machine with no extra work required from you" but naturally may run better because it's more powerful.

The Steam Frame is the one that's really different here though, because it can either stream games or run them directly. So with Steam Frame Verified they're focusing on the standalone mode to have "the default graphics configuration needs to perform well, text and UI elements need to be clear and legible on the built-in display, and the default controller configuration needs to work well with the Steam Frame Controllers" which applies to both VR and non-VR titles.

Valve also updated the game developer Partner Dashboard to include more info for the Steam Machine and Steam Frame along with their testing information.

There's also the updated Steamworks developers documentation:

• Steam Machine Steamworks Documentation
• Steam Frame Steamworks Documentation

Source: Valve