The new Steam Deck ebook lays out Valve’s long-term vision

On Thursday, Valve released a digital “booklet” all about the Steam Deck, Steam, and the company itself. Valve says it released the book ahead of the Steam Deck’s launch in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, but the book also happens to arrive on the six-month anniversary of when Valve sent the first order emails allowing people to buy their Steam Deck.

The 52-page ebook is free, and if you’re at all interested in Valve or the Steam Deck, I’d recommend flipping through it. Not only are there a few pages littered with Steam Deck prototypes, but you’ll also be able to read about Valve’s ambitions for the Steam Deck in its own words.

Perhaps the most notable part is that Valve is committing to the Steam Deck and SteamOS as a “multi-generational product line.” Valve has called the Steam Deck a “multi-generational category” in the past, but the company goes even farther with what it prints in the book (and because it’s printed in a book, it’s definitely that much more official):

Anyway, this is a multi-generational product line. Valve will support Steam Deck and SteamOS well into the foreseeable future. We will learn from the Steam community about new uses for our hardware that we haven’t thought of yet, and we will build new versions to be even more open and capable than the first version of Steam Deck has been.

After reading that, I’m already eagerly anticipating the Steam Deck 3, though hopefully the third entry of a certain video game series arrives before that does.

Valve also shared some interesting numbers about Steam, like that there are more than 130 million active players on Steam every month and more than 30,000 titles on the platform. And as of the publishing of the book, Valve says that more than 4,500 titles have the “Verified” or “Playable” designation for Steam Deck, meaning that approximately 15 percent of all games on Steam are already at the very least deemed to be “Playable.”

Since those first order emails went out in February, Valve has been ramping up its shipping volume, and on Wednesday, the company even said that some Q4 reservations were being bumped up to Q3. If you place a reservation today, Valve’s website says you won’t be able to order your device until sometime in Q4. But at the rate things have been improving, hopefully it won’t be too long until your order email hits your inbox — and while you wait, Valve has a book you can read.