Valve has quietly discontinued Steam Link which is their in-home streaming box which it first launched back in 2015.
Valve stops production of new units
There’s quite a low key announcement posted on Valve’s Steam Link new page which says that production of new units has been stopped and Valve will just be selling off the rest of the almost sold out inventory in the US.
They also said that these sold out completely in Europe. It’s also worth noting that Valve announced that they would continue offering support for existing Steam Link Hardware.
This is their official announcement: “The supply of physical Steam Link hardware devices is sold out in Europe and almost sold out in the US. Moving forward, Valve intends to continue supporting the existing Steam Link hardware as well as the distribution of the software versions of Steam Link, available for many leading smartphones, tablets, and televisions.”
The $50 Steam Link has been designed for streaming games from a local gaming PC to an HDTV which is in the very same house.
If your networking hardware was up to it, the Steam Link did a pretty great job.
Valve’s focus shifts towards mobile apps
Ars Technica notes that during the recent months, Valve has shifted its primary focus further from the dedicated streaming hardware and towards mobile applications which could provide the very same feature.
Ars Technica also announced that Apple is currently blocking the release of a Steam Link app that has been designed for Apple TV and iOS devices. But it looks like similar apps are now available for Samsung Galaxy devices and more Android phones.
This Steam Link discontinuation doesn’t quite hit us as a surprise especially considering the fact that Valve has been selling the small devices for a closeout price of $2.50 earlier this year.
Even if Valve insists they are “still working hard” on Linux gaming and bringing Windows game compatibility to SteamOS, Valve’s 2015 hardware initiative hasn’t quite made a considerable impact on the marketplace.