Valve Discontinues Steam Link Set Top Box Hardware

Valve has discontinued the Steam Link set top box hardware with existing stock rapidly selling out. Released in 2015 alongside Steam Machines, Steam Link lets you stream PC games from your computer to any other screen via WiFi or Ethernet. Since then it has evolved into a Steam Link app for Android with an iOS version yet to see the light of day due to the Seattle-based company's initial version conflicting with App Store guidelines. The announcement of Steam Link's discontinuation was made public in a news post on Valve's site.

"The supply of physical Steam Link hardware devices is sold out in Europe and almost sold out in the US," the post reads. "Moving forward, Valve intends to continue supporting the existing Steam Link hardware as well as distribution of the software versions of Steam Link, available for many leading smart phones, tablets and televisions."

With Steam Link following the demise of Steam Machines, it leaves the Steam Controller and a new VR headset as the only two hardware projects within Valve.

Announced in 2013, Steam Machines were small form factor PCs meant for living room use. These would be powered by SteamOS, Valve's Linux-based operating system. SteamOS was envisioned to make it easier for developers to port Windows games to Linux. At the time the company said that these would ship in 2014. On realising that its removal of Steam Machines was noticed by all, Valve employee Pierre-Loup A. Griffais explained what was going on in a post on the Steam for Linux community section of the site.

"We've noticed that what started out as a routine cleanup of the Steam Store navigation turned into a story about the delisting of Steam Machines. That section of the Steam Store is still available, but was removed from the main navigation bar based on user traffic. Given that this change has sparked a lot of interest, we thought it'd make sense to address some of the points we've seen people take away from it," his post reads.

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