Valve hopes Steam Machine can someday run Battlefield 6, Valorant

Valve just announced three new devices, the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and the new Steam Controller. The Steam Machine, a compact tabletop console that runs SteamOS, has six times the horsepower of the Steam Deck. It is capable of running AAA titles, albeit at toned down visual settings, thanks to its Zen 4 AMD CPU and a 28 CU GPU (110 W TDP). However, the issue with Linux and kernel-level anti-cheat still exists, but Valve hopes the Steam Machine will be a turning point.

For context, games like Battlefield 6 and Valorant use a kernel-level anti-cheat system that only favours Windows and cannot be replicated on Linux, without developer intervention. Therefore, as it stands now, such games cannot run on Linux and by extension, SteamOS. With the Steam Machine and its improved capabilities, Valve hopes it will incentivize game developers to enable anti-cheat on Linux. Speaking with Eurogamer, a Valve executive said:

While [the] Steam Machine also requires Dev participation to enable anti-cheat, we think the incentives for enabling Anti- cheat on Machine to be higher than on Deck as we expect more people to play multiplayer games on it. So ultimately we hope that the launch of Machine will change the equation around anti-cheat support and increase its support.

The Steam Machine, with its more capable hardware and support for dedicated peripherals, will allow gamers to have a more PC like experience, enabling more competitive multiplayer gaming. Games like Valorant should be able to run at a high enough FPS, granted the connected display allows the same.

Even though Valve doesn’t explicitly compare the GPU in the Steam Machine to any desktop or mobile offering, it is essentially a toned-down Radeon RX 7600. However, Valve is positioning the Steam Machine as a 4K 60 FPS capable device. That may not be achievable in all AAA games as Digital Foundry points out in its hands on impressions. Valve did state that the Steam Machine will support ray tracing at “full performance” by the time it releases, and that it is working with AMD to get FSR4 running as well.