My initial thought is definitely yes for the Steam Machine, and maybe yes for the Steam Frame.
All devices are Valve made hardware running steamOS, so I would think a lot of the discussions/content would apply to Steam Deck. This also isn’t a super busy community, so I wouldn’t be that worried about Steam Deck specific content getting buried.
The Steam Frame is a bit more iffy than the Steam Machine though, there’s a lot of experience differences between the Deck/Machine and a VR device, so there will be larger differences. Also the Frame has ARM hardware and has to use an additional x86 to ARM compatibility layer for games running on it, so we’ll probably see some unique compatibility bugs for it.
Overall though I just want to hear everyone else’s opinions on it.
Absolutely. I would rather have one great community instead of 3 hyper specific communities. It just needs to have flags like [steamdeck] [ steammachine] [steamframe] Or even shorthand sd, sm, sf.
Personally, I like the idea of becoming more of a “Steam Hardwares” community, as them being all kinda niche but close in scope, they shouldn’t conflict with each other nor turn the community into a too generalist one.
I think a name change would have to match. Steam hardware seems pretty straight forward to me.
Since they’re all designed to work together as a trio, surely it makes sense to include them all? And it’s not a forever decision, they can always branch off later if it becomes clear enough people are interested in one or the other to support their own communities.
Definitely yes, they all run Steam OS and all 3 device are very interchangeable in what they offer. Plus there’s not that much people to properly support 3 different communities.
I think that there is a somewhat decent chance that there will be an ARM Steam Deck Mini at some point. The Steam Client will probably be released for ARM distributions. I think for the foreseeable future there will be a considerable overlap of topics between thee devices.
I think should there be a flood of posts regarding hardware tinkering of the other devices (people sharing faceplate STLs for Machine or addons for the Frame’s expansion port), they could be directed to dedicated communities but for now IMO it’s fine to be inclusive.
I think that there is a somewhat decent chance that there will be an ARM Steam Deck Mini at some point.
Damn. I hope so. I play many indie retro style games, and my favorites are all on my Steam account. I would get so much use out of a truly pocket device with good retro controls and my Steam account signed in.
Edit: Alternately, somebody needs to release a dedicated pocket device with “Donut Dodo” pre-installed, and we can call it good enough for an few months.
Yes.
We are the niche of a niche. We need more content, as long as it’s relevant.
I’d say yes. If the volume becomes overwhelming new communities can easily be created.
Agreed, the fediverse is small enough now that living aggregate communities are preferable to dead specific ones. Especially because everyone hates posting something, getting their post removed and being told to go post in another very similar community they didn’t know existed. As you said, if it becomes a problem you can just spin off
Fragmented communities is such an annoying problem in the fediverse.
The problem can also be a positive, so that communities for more specific niches can be created, or to have alternatives for already existing ones with different management philosophies.
Feels like the more accurate name moving forward would be “SteamOS Hardware”.
I vote yes, and change the name so it isn’t just deck
I’d love to see them included, honestly. it seems they’re all part of the same family.
Sure! The only thing I’m worried about taking over the community is the Steam Frame. There’s a chance it becomes super popular. But if that happens, we can just make a new community for it. No biggie.
i feel like most steam deck and steam machines discussions will have so much overlap, that it won’t matter.
Steam Frame might be more specialised and a dedicated community could be helpful, but i doubt it will produce thaaat much noise and a seperate community might be pretty barren, just because VR is afterall still very niche.
tl;dr: dont see why we should split communities, if something is specific to frame/machine/deck we can specify that in a posts title.
I’d suggest a separate community for each hardware variant and a Steam OS community acting as a broader hardware indifferent Steam gaming community (which I believe exists already)
this is just a forwardlooking estimation that it will be easier for moderation.
I like the idea of having a single place where Valve’s hardware can be discussed, but the current name will make discoverability of such a community difficult. If the name cannot be changed, then I’d rec just leaving this one for only steam decks.
This is where my opinion currently lies. On one hand, the fediverse (and this community) is so small that having discussion for the whole Steam hardware ecosystem in one place makes sense. On the other hand, the name of this community is “Steam Deck”. The point of this community should be discussion about the Steam Deck. I wouldn’t want people posting unrelated news and help requests here.
I think the only way to change the name of the community is by setting a display name, but I do not think that would be sufficient for this purpose. I think the best route of action would be to create a new community called /c/SteamHardware or something. Or just use one of the multiple existing /c/Steam communities.
