steam

Valve compares its loot boxes to Labubus in lawsuit defense

gambling, gaming, legal, loot boxes, new york, steam, valve / Tim Belzer / March 12, 2026

Valve said point-blank that transferability of in-game items “is a right we believe should not be taken away, and we refuse to do that” despite the NYAG’s request. Valve also said it has worries about an NYAG proposal that would require Valve to collect “additional information” from players “on the off-chance someone in New York was anonymizing their location to appear outside of New York, such as by using a VPN.” Such processes, and others to further establish that children were not reselling items, would be an “invasive” violation for every Steam user, Valve wrote.

Valve said it has been “working to educate” the NYAG’s office on loot boxes since they first reached out on the matter in 2023. And while Valve said it would respect any state law that explicitly outlawed randomized loot boxes in games, the NYAG’s lawsuit “went far beyond what existing New York law requires and even beyond New York itself.” Thus, even though it might be easier for Valve to just settle the case, such an outcome “would have been bad for users and other game developers, and impacted our ability to innovate in game design.”

Outside of the New York case, law firm Hagens Berman is preparing a proposed class-action lawsuit in Washington state accusing Valve of “extract[ing] money from consumers, including children, through deceptive, casino-style psychological tactics.” That lawsuit’s arguments focus heavily on Valve’s alleged use of “psychological triggers” like “unpredictable reward schedules, sensory design, near-miss illusions, chasing losses and around-the-clock availability” to form an addictive gambling loop.

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Don’t worry, Valve still plans to launch the Steam Machine “this year”

delay, gaming, Hardware, ram shortage, steam, steam machine, valve / Tim Belzer / March 9, 2026

Valve quickly reconfirmed that it plans to ship the Steam Machine and other recently announced hardware products “this year,” after an official blog post late last week set off some worried speculation about possible delays.

While Steam’s 2025 Year in Review mainly focused on new Steam tools and features released last year, the introductory section focused on the company’s previously announced upcoming hardware plans. However, when that Year in Review post was first published Friday afternoon, it included a surprisingly vague line saying “we hope to ship in 2026, but as we shared recently, memory and storage shortages have created challenges for us.” (Emphasis added.)

As stray chatter about that stray line started to filter through message boards and comment threads, Valve quickly issued a clarification. By late Friday, the blog post had been updated to note that, despite the global supply chain challenges, “we will be shipping all three products this year. More updates will be shared as we finalize our plans.” (Emphasis added.)

Careful readers might notice that even the updated text leaves out the qualifiers that narrowed Valve’s “this year” launch window in the recent past. Valve announced an “early 2026” target in November and later said that “our goal of shipping all three products in the first half of the year has not changed” in a February update (emphasis added). While we’d caution readers not to necessarily read too much into that change (or the initial “hope” messaging), we will note that Valve said in February that it still has “work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates we can confidently announce, being mindful of how quickly the circumstances around both of these things can change.”

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After a rocky six years, Sony cancels future single-player PC game releases

gaming, Ghost of Yotei, marathon, PlayStation, PlayStation 5, ps5, Saros, Sony, steam / Kris Guyer / March 4, 2026

Finally, Bloomberg’s sources cautioned that Sony’s strategy for single-player releases could change again at some point in the future.

Historically, Sony did not release its first-party games on PCs. That began to change in 2020, and the company has put out titles like Horizon Zero Dawn, Helldivers 2, and Ghost of Tsushima on PCs, among others. Sony’s PC launch experiments haven’t been without confusion or drama, however.

The company was inconsistent about which titles reached the platform and about the timelines for those releases. Single-player titles hit Steam months or even years after their console releases, long after the gaming community buzz around them had died down.

Further, some titles required players sign in to a PlayStation account to access core features, which wasn’t a popular choice with everyone, and the back-and-forth on that policy felt chaotic to many players.

Sony has been less decisive about its PC strategy compared to the other two major console manufacturers. Nintendo simply does not release its games on PC at all, while Microsoft has released all of its first-party Xbox titles on PC.

Bloomberg also notes that some recent releases have not sold as well on PC as hoped, suggesting that Sony’s test-the-waters approach has found said water lukewarm.

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Why Final Fantasy is now targeting PC as its “lead platform”

Final Fantasy, gaming, pc, ps5, RPG, Sony, Square, Square Enix, steam / Kris Guyer / February 20, 2026

For a long time now, PC gamers have been used to the Final Fantasy series treating their platform as somewhat secondary to the game’s core console versions. There are some signs that may be starting to change, though, as director Naoki Hamaguchi has confirmed that the PC is now the “lead platform” for development of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy.

In a recent interview with Automaton, Hamaguchi clarified that the team takes the relatively common practice of creating visual assets for its multiplatform games by targeting “high-end environments first,” then performing a “reduction” for less powerful platforms. These days, that means “our 3D assets are created at the highest quality level based on PC as the foundation,” he said. Players have already noticed this graphical difference in the PC version of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Hamaguchi said, and “our philosophy will not change for the third installment.”

While PC gaming is only “gradually expanding in Japan,” Hamaguchi said the rapid growth in international PC gamers has led the company to “develop assets with the broad PC market in mind.”

The PC versions of recent Final Fantasy VII Remake games have sold well on Steam and the Epic Games Store, he added.

It’s unclear if that means PC gamers will have to wait longer than console owners for future Final Fantasy games. The first Final Fantasy VII Remake didn’t hit PCs until 19 months after the PlayStation 4 version, and Rebirth was first available on PC 11 months after its PS5 launch. Elsewhere in the franchise, the PC versions of both Final Fantasy XVI and Final Fantasy XV didn’t hit until over a year after their console counterparts.

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GameHub will give Mac owners another imperfect way to play Windows games

Apple, Emulation, gaming, Mac, Macintosh, proton, steam, steamos, valvew, Windows / Rejus Almole / February 17, 2026

Reasons for worry

In a recent interview with The Memory Core newsletter, GameSir admitted that its primary motivation for releasing a Windows emulation tool was to sell more of its controllers. But GameSir’s controllers aren’t required to use the Android version, which it says was sideloaded on 5 million (primarily Chinese) Android devices even before its official Google Play release in November.

GameHub’s Windows emulation works on Android, but there are some issues. Credit: GameSir

GameHub on Android has also faced controversy for including a number of invasive trackers (which are removed in a community-built Lite version). A GameSir representative told The Memory Core that this was just standard practice in the Chinese market, where there is less sensitivity to such user tracking, and that it has since been removed.

The representative also addressed concerns about reusing open source compatibility code in that interview, saying that its Windows emulator was “developed in-house by GameSir’s core engineering team” with its “own in-house compatibility layer (such as syscall hooks, GameScopeVK, and other technologies), rather than modifications to Wine’s core code.” That said, the representative admitted GameFusion “reference[s] and use UI components from Winlator [an open source Windows emulation tool for Android]… to maintain ecosystem compatibility and familiarity.”

The compatibility issues and controversial corporate entity involved here probably mean that GameHub for Mac won’t be the Valve SteamOS/Proton moment that Apple gamers have been waiting for. Still, it’ll be nice for MacBook owners to have yet another option to play Windows games without needing to run a Windows install.

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Why $700 could be a “death sentence” for the Steam Machine

console, gaming, microsoft, Nintendo, pricing, Sony, steam, steam machine, steamos, valve / Kris Guyer / February 6, 2026

Bad news for Valve in particular?

On the surface, it might seem like every company making gaming hardware would be similarly affected by increasing component costs. In practice, though, analysts suggested that Valve might be in a uniquely bad position to absorb this ongoing market disruption.

Large console makers like Sony and Microsoft “can commit to tens of millions of orders, and have strong negotiating power,” Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad pointed out. The Steam Machine, on the other hand, is “a niche product that cannot benefit in the same way when it comes to procurement,” meaning Valve has to shoulder higher component cost increases.

F-Squared’s Futter echoed that Valve is “not an enormous player in the hardware space, even with the Steam Deck’s success. So they likely don’t have the same kind of priority as a Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft when it comes to suppliers.”

PlayStation 5 in horizontal orientation, compared to Xbox Series X in horizontal orientation — Sony and Microsoft might have an advantage when negotiating volume discounts with suppliers. Credit: Sam Machkovech

The size of the Steam Machine price adjustment also might depend on when Valve made its supply chain commitments. “It’s not clear when or if Valve locked in supply contracts for the Steam Machine, or if supply can be diverted from the Steam Deck for the new product,” Tech Insights analyst James Sanders noted. On the other hand, “Sony and Microsoft likely will have locked in more favorable component pricing before the current spike,” Van Dreunen said.

That said, some other aspects of the Steam Machine design could give Valve some greater pricing flexibility. Sanders noted that the Steam Machine’s smaller physical size could mean smaller packaging and reduced shipping costs for Valve. And selling the system primarily through direct sales via the web and Steam itself eliminates the usual retailer markups console makers have to take into account, he added.

“I think Valve was hoping for a much lower price and that the component issue would be short-term,” Cole said. “Obviously it is looking more like a long-term issue.”

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The first new Marathon game in decades will launch on March 5

Bungie, delay, destiny, Development, extraction shooter, gaming, Halo, marathon, ps5, release date, steam, xbox series / Paul Patrick / January 19, 2026

It’s been nearly three years now since Destiny maker (and Sony subsidiary) Bungie formally announced a revival of the storied Marathon FPS franchise. And it has been about seven months since the game’s original announced release date of September 23, 2025 was pushed back indefinitely after a reportedly poor response to the game’s first Alpha test.

But today, in a post on the PlayStation Blog, Bungie revealed that the new Marathon would finally be hitting PS5, Windows, and Xbox Series X|S on March 5, narrowing down the month-long March release window announced back in December.

Today’s pre-rder trailer revealing the Marathon release date.

Unlike Destiny 2, which transitioned to a free-to-play model in 2019, the new Marathon sells for $40 in a Standard Edition or a $60 Deluxe Edition that includes some digital rewards and cosmetics. That mirrors the pricing of the somewhat similar Arc Raiders, which recently hit 12 million sales in less than 12 weeks.

A new kind of Marathon

Unlike the original Marathon trilogy on the ’90s Macintosh—which closely followed on the single-player campaign corridors and deathmatch multiplayer of the original Doom—the new Marathon is described as a “PvPvE survival extraction shooter.” That means gameplay based around exploring distinct zones and scavenging for cosmetics and gear upgrades in exploratory missions alone or with up to two friends, then seeing those missions “break into fast-paced PvP combat” at a moment’s notice, according to the game’s official description.

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Why won’t Steam Machine support HDMI 2.1? Digging in on the display standard drama.

AMD, drivers, gaming, steam, steam machine, steamos, valve, Windows / Kris Guyer / December 4, 2025

When Valve announced its upcoming Steam Machine hardware last month, some eagle-eyed gamers may have been surprised to see that the official spec sheet lists support for HDMI 2.0 output, rather than the updated, higher-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 standard introduced in 2017. Now, Valve tells Ars that, while the hardware itself actually supports HDMI 2.1, the company is struggling to offer full support for that standard due to Linux drivers that are “still a work-in-progress on the software side.”

As we noted last year, the HDMI Forum (which manages the official specifications for HDMI standards) has officially blocked any open source implementation of HDMI 2.1. That means the open source AMD drivers used by SteamOS can’t fully implement certain features that are specific to the updated output standard.

“At this time an open source HDMI 2.1 implementation is not possible without running afoul of the HDMI Forum requirements,” AMD engineer Alex Deucher said at the time.

Doing what they can

This situation has caused significant headaches for Valve, which tells Ars it has had to validate the Steam Machine’s HDMI 2.1 hardware via Windows during testing. And when it comes to HDMI performance via SteamOS, a Valve representative tells Ars that “we’ve been working on trying to unblock things there.”

That includes unblocking HDMI 2.0’s resolution and frame-rate limits, which max out at 60 Hz for a 4K output, according to the official standard. Valve tells Ars it has been able to increase that limit to the “4K @ 120Hz” listed on the Steam Machine spec sheet, though, thanks to a technique called chroma sub-sampling.

Why won’t Steam Machine support HDMI 2.1? Digging in on the display standard drama. Read More »

Valve rejoins the VR hardware wars with standalone Steam Frame

gaming, headset, steam, valve, virtual reality, vr / Tim Belzer / November 12, 2025

Valve also tells Ars that streaming to the Steam Frame will be “as efficient as possible,” maximizing battery life from the included 21.6 Wh battery. “Standalone battery life will be much more variable, depending on the game and its settings,” Valve Engineer Jeremy Selan and Designer Lawrence Yang told Ars via email.

While a wired PC connection would go a long way toward addressing those battery-life and extra latency concerns, Valve said the Steam Frame won’t even support it as an option. “We’re focused on a robust wireless streaming experience, which is why we included a dedicated wireless adapter, have a dedicated radio on the headset just for streaming, and invented a new streaming technology to optimize the streaming experience (Foveated Streaming),” Selan and Yang told Ars.

A low-weight modular “core”

All told, the Steam Frame comes in at just 440 grams, a welcome and sizable reduction from the 515 grams of the Quest 3. Interestingly, Valve’s spec sheet also specifically calls out the 185 gram “core” of the headset hardware, which comprises all the main components besides the battery, headstrap, and speakers (e.g., lenses, displays, motherboard, cooling, processor, RAM, tracking system, etc).

That core weight is important, Selan and Yang told Ars, because “it’s designed to be modular so one could imagine other headsets connecting to this core module that bring different features.” So tinkerers or third-party headset makers could theoretically build modified versions of the Steam Frame with lighter batteries or streamlined headstrap/speaker combos, for instance. The Steam Frame’s monochrome passthrough cameras can also be accessed via a front expansion port with a standardized Gen 4 PCIe interface, Valve said.

It’s an interesting potential direction for new hardware that will launch into a more niche, less irrationally exuberant VR market than Valve’s previous virtual reality headsets. But with companies like Apple and Meta pivoting toward augmented reality and/or mixed-reality hardware of late, it’s nice to see Valve continuing to cater to the small but dedicated market of gamers who are still interested in playing in fully immersive VR environments.

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Meet the first person to own over 40,000 paid Steam games

Achievements, badges, collection, Digital, gaming, steam, valve / Tim Belzer / September 24, 2025

With those games excluded, SonixLegend’s collection actually encompasses the vast majority of the 45,000 or so “full profile” paid games tracked by SteamDB. But with thousands of new games being released on Steam every year, it might not be long until a badge for 50,000 owned games becomes a real possibility.

So what’s good?

It’s hard to gauge just how much of SonixLegend’s massive Steam collection officially counts as a “backlog” since their private account doesn’t offer a public breakdown of playtime for most individual titles. That said, there are only 261 games for which SonixLegend has earned at least one achievement and only 16 that were good enough to merit a user review (they all ended up as “Recommended”).

The implications of SonixLegend trying to actually work through their Steam backlog can be more than a little intimidating, though. HowLongToBeat data suggests that finishing just the “top 2,500” games in SonixLegend’s Steam collection would take over 2,463 days, or nearly seven years of 24/7 gameplay.

Ironically, SonixLegend’s favorite game isn’t even one that counts toward their record-setting badge. The user’s Steam profile page lists 551 hours spent playing Valve’s 2010 free-to-play overhead shooter Alien Swarm. In a way, it’s nice to know that, even with access to nearly every paid modern PC game in existence, the one game this user keeps coming back to is a 15-year-old title that doesn’t cost a penny.

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Steam will wind down support for 32-bit Windows as that version of Windows fades

32-bit, gaming, steam, Tech, valve, Windows 10, windows 10 22h2, Windows 11 / Kris Guyer / September 19, 2025

Though the 32-bit versions of Windows were widely used from the mid-90s all the way through to the early 2010s, this change is coming so late that it should only actually affect a statistically insignificant number of Steam users. Valve already pulled Steam support for all versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8 in January 2024, and 2021’s Windows 11 was the first in decades not to ship a 32-bit version. That leaves only the 32-bit version of Windows 10, which is old enough that it will stop getting security updates in either October 2025 or October 2026, depending on how you count it.

According to Steam Hardware Survey data from August, usage of the 32-bit version of Windows 10 (and any other 32-bit version of Windows) is so small that it’s lumped in with “other” on the page that tracks Windows version usage. All “other” versions of Windows combined represent roughly 0.05 percent of all Steam users. The 64-bit version of Windows 10 still runs on just over a third of all Steam-using Windows PCs, while the 64-bit version of Windows 11 accounts for just under two-thirds.

The change to the Steam client shouldn’t have any effects on game availability or compatibility. Any older 32-bit games that you can currently run in 64-bit versions of Windows will continue to work fine because, unlike modern macOS versions, new 64-bit versions of Windows still maintain compatibility with most 32-bit apps.

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Hollow Knight: Silksong is breaking Steam, Nintendo’s eShop

bandwidth, gaming, server errors, silksong, steam, team cherry, valve / Paul Patrick / September 4, 2025

An influx of players excited for this morning’s launch of Hollow Knight: Silksong are encountering widespread errors purchasing and downloading the game from Steam this morning. Ars Technica writers have encountered errors getting store pages to load, adding the game to an online shopping cart, and checking out once the game is part of the cart.

That aligns with widespread social media complaints and data from DownDetector, which saw a sudden spike of over 11,000 reports of problems with Steam in the minutes following Silksong‘s 10 am Eastern time release on Steam. The server problems don’t seem to be completely stopping everyone, though, as SteamDB currently reports over 100,000 concurrent players for Silksong as of this writing.

Ars also encountered some significant delays and/or outright errors when downloading other games and updates and syncing cloud saves on Steam during this morning’s server problems. The Humble Store page for Silksong currently warns North American purchasers that “We have run out of Steam keys for Hollow Knight: Silksong in your region, but more are on their way! As soon as we receive more Steam keys, we will add them to your download page. Sorry about the delay!”

The PC version of Silksong currently seems to be available for purchase and download without issue. Ars was also able to purchase and download the Switch 2 version of Silksong from the Nintendo eShop without encountering any errors, though others have reported problems with that online storefront [Update: As of 11:18 am, Nintendo is reporting, “The [Nintendo eShop] network service is unavailable at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause].” The game is still listed as merely “Announced” and not available for purchase on its PlayStation Store page as of this writing.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is breaking Steam, Nintendo’s eShop Read More »