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SteamOS slowly expands to non-Valve hardware

Ars Technica •
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Steam OS is continuing its slow march to fuller support on a wider variety of non-Valve hardware. This weekend’s release of the Steam OS 3.8.25 Beta includes “initial gamepad support” for a few recent gaming handhelds and improved support for a few others. Those newly supported handhelds include MSI’s Claw 8 EX AI+, the powerful handheld built around Intel’s Arc G3 processor. While Steam OS has long included beta support for AMD handhelds, Valve has only recently been working on compatibility with Intel-based handhelds like the MSI Claw line.

Steam OS 3.8.25 also newly supports the controllers built into Ayaneo’s Android-focused Pocket S2 and the Windows-based Konkr Fit. Valve also says the new OS offers “improved support” for older MSI Claw devices and the One XPlayer line. This update follows June’s Steam OS 3.8 update, which stressed improved controller support on handhelds from GPD Win, Anbernic, and Orange Pi.

So far, the Lenovo Legion Go S remains the only non-Valve device to sport the full “powered by Steam OS” branding. Elsewhere, Valve updated the Linux driver for the Steam Controller, allowing it to work with native controller applications even when Steam is not running.