Valve had a chance to play the exclusivity game with the Steam Machine. They looked at it, thought about it, and said “nah.” And honestly, it’s the most Valve thing they’ve ever done.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Valve engineer Yazan Aldehayyat confirmed there won’t be any Steam Machine exclusives. Zero. None. The whole point is to keep things open so other hardware manufacturers can also build on the platform without Valve locking anything down. More people playing PC games means more people buying stuff on Steam, and that’s the real play here.
Valve engineer Loup Griffais put it even more bluntly: “Restricting where people can play a game I don’t think is a great model, at least for us.” Instead, they’re treating “the whole PC catalog” as their launch exclusive. Which, when you think about it, is kind of a power move. While every other company is out there begging you to buy their console for the one game you actually want, Valve’s over here saying “you can literally play everything.”
The strategy makes sense if you zoom out. Valve isn’t trying to win the console wars because they already won the game that matters. Steam is the default storefront for PC gaming, and every new piece of hardware that runs it is a win. Griffais even suggested that other manufacturers might innovate on hardware in ways Valve hasn’t considered, which would benefit everyone. It’s collaborative capitalism, and it’s refreshingly non-predatory.
Of course, the elephant in the room is still pricing. Aldehayyat was pretty blunt that costs are “getting worse,” with retail shelf prices lagging bulk supply pricing by three to six months. So yeah, you might not need a second mortgage to play games on your new Steam Machine, but you’re still going to feel it in your wallet.
The real kicker? Those Half-Life 3 rumors aren’t getting any quieter. Valve could have announced a Steam Machine exclusive that would have melted the internet, but they chose not to. That’s either the most disciplined decision in gaming history, or they genuinely don’t have anything ready. Either way, the Steam Machine is shaping up to be the most honest piece of hardware in years.
Jordan Hayes is a staff writer at SteamGamer.net covering PC gaming news, hardware, and the latest from the Steam ecosystem. When not writing, Jordan is probably buried in a roguelike or arguing about GPU prices.
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