Steam Link from Valve is dead, and it sucks

Steam Link from Valve, the wonderful black box that transmitted games from your PC to your TV, is dead. And it sucks, because Steam Link has changed my way of playing forever, dragging me out of the office and into the rest of my house.

"The supply of physical Steam Link hardware devices is exhausted in Europe and almost in the United States," the company said on Steam. "In the future, Valve will continue to support existing Steam Link hardware as well as the distribution of Steam Link software releases, available for many smart phones, tablets and TVs."

So, while the Steam Link hardware is dead, the software, its spirit, continues. Of course, it's not really a surprise. Valve has been calling for some time now its once ambitious hardware technology. Steam Machines disappeared from the Steam Hardware tab last spring. The Steam Link itself frequently sold for $ 5 at sales and only $ 2.50 for the latest Steam summer sales. When Valve announced the Steam Link mobile apps in May, we figured it might be the ultimate nail in the black box coffin. Indeed it was.

Apps simply can not offer the same experience that Steam Link offers, at a low price. Streaming games with minimal latency or little visual artifacts require a robust network and the Steam In-Home streaming software that powers the Valve platform works best on Ethernet (even Wi-Fi at 5 GHz may be uneven in congested areas). That's why the Steam Link case included a physical network connection, as well as USB ports that accept any PC controller, or even a keyboard and mouse if you wanted to do without it.

Brad Chacos / IDG

Properly configured, the Steam Link would offer 1080p games with virtually no lag at 60 fps in all but the most difficult games. It was also nice to play cooperative games on sofa with others. In simple terms, the little box brings PC games to hard-to-reach places before.

As exciting as they are, the Android and TV apps simply can not replicate this complete experience. (And you can not get it on your iPhone or iPad since Apple has rejected the app for iOS, because Apple.) If you want to exploit the features of Steam Link, you need to connect a laptop with Ethernet and then, launch Steam In-Home Streaming to connect it to your main computer. Or, if you live in the US, you can still get a Steam link before the supplies are nearly empty. It's worth it, even at $ 50.

But for all intents and purposes, the steam bond is dead – just like the steam engines. Steam Machines has left wonderful creations. The death of Steam Link is painful.