Valve’s new ‘Powered by SteamOS’ branding hints at new hardware

Those Intel, AMD, and Nvidia stickers on your laptop aren’t just pretty decoration. They’re part of some big (and very intentional) branding programs with huge amounts of money behind them. That’s why Valve is turning heads with some adjustment to its branding guidelines, with new and very official “Powered by SteamOS” logos and trademarks.

The new logo appeared on Valve’s official Steam branding guidelines document (PDF) for partners who want to leverage Steam to sell laptops, desktops, and other stuff. The “other stuff” is what’s exciting here.

“The Powered by SteamOS logo indicates that a hardware device will run the SteamOS and boot into SteamOS upon powering on the device,” says the document, spotted by SteamDB and Ars Technica. “Partners/manufacturers will ship hardware with a Steam image in the form provided by and/or developed in close collaboration with Valve.”

While there are lots of ways to get something very close to the Linux-based SteamOS on your PC or other hardware, right now there’s only one retail product being sold with SteamOS pre-installed: Valve’s own Steam Deck. It seems logical to assume that these guidelines wouldn’t be necessary — and wouldn’t be implemented — unless Valve was preparing to launch new Steam-powered hardware with other partners.

To be clear, that’s a complete supposition on my part. But it’s hardly unprecedented. Most people’s first interaction with SteamOS was as part of Valve’s defunct Steam Machine program, back when Valve partnered with companies like Alienware to make relatively inexpensive Linux-powered PC/game console hybrids. It started in 2015 and fizzled out in just a few years. But Steam Machines got the ball rolling for other major Valve projects, including game streaming and its own hardware designs, like the Steam Controller and eventually the Steam Deck.

The ill-fated Steam Machines program also gave Valve a taste for hardware partnerships, which you can see in its currently active (if still very niche) VR ecosystem. Valve’s Index VR headset is the descendant of the HTC Vive series (with it still using “Vive” controllers). Valve did a lot of work with AMD to create the Steam Deck, which runs on a Ryzen APU with some crucial modifications from laptop designs.

And perhaps most pertinently, we know that Valve is officially working with Asus to get some version of SteamOS on the ROG Ally, or at least they were earlier this year. Considering that the Windows operating system continues to be a weak link for the many handheld gaming PCs that have followed in the Steam Deck’s wake, it’s easy to see why companies like Asus might be eager to hand over the software side of the equation to Valve. Especially if they can leverage the well-known Steam brand with a “Powered by SteamOS” logo on the marketing.

Once again, please let me stress that all of this is speculative so far. But there’s certainly reason to be excited if you’re a fan of SteamOS or handheld PCs. We’ll have our eyes out for any Steam-adjacent hardware developments at CES in exactly one month.