I want a screen off mode period. There have been times I’d like to stream a game using the deck to control but have the video on a TV or monitor. Just make turning the brightness all the way down turn the screen off. I’m a bit surprised I have to wish for that.
want a screen off mode period. There have been times I’d like to stream a game
I dock my deck sometimes. In desktop mode you can turn off the deck’s display and only use the external. Not sure if this helps.
A much needed update. Took them a long time but glad it’s here.
Finally. This should’ve been a thing from release
I have been wanting this for ages.
Now it would be nice if they could add a download all updates button (if only for Steamdeck)
Going into that download screen and telling 20 games to download now before I’m going on a flight or something is a pain in the arse
I hate having outstanding updates for no real logical reason and it annoys me so much to go into the downloads screen and regularly queue up updates for the way too many games I have installed.
It makes perfect sense if you’re a systems engineer.
Downloading games costs bandwidth.
Steam services millions of customers daily.
Valve, correctly, decided to do a bit of load-balancing by prioritizing updates by how recently and frequently you play them, and spreads them out.
This is nicer to their systems, and its nicer to most people who don’t live alone and have to share internet with other human beings in their home (or at work).
You’d think it would be no big deal, bandwidth is “infinite” and “free” in most peoples minds. But there is a maximum throughput, and there is a cost in energy, time, performance, and money.
Load-balancing, people. It saves lives.
Counterpoint, I couldn’t give two fucks about a billion dollar companies bottom line and if you have bandwidth problems at home I don’t give a fuck and you can configure your client and router to deal with it.
No reason in the world valve can’t do what my Xbox does.
You sound like a very selfish person.
Tbf selfish is how one should interact with for profit institutions. Particularly the larger ones.
Unless they changed it in the last couple of months Xbox does the same thing. When I still had my XSX there were updates sitting idly in the queue all the time.
And countercounterpoint this is also an environmental issue. Unless you don’t give a fuck about that either.
It’s a configuration item.
As for “environmental issue” 👌👍🤣 resorting to the edgiest of trivial cases in technology as a reason to not do something is absurd. A 25GB hit to a CDN over a month is nothing. At scale either.
Name one other place you expect that level of efficiency. You expect that level of efficiency on Linux repos? What about general purpose desktop applications? I shouldn’t get an auto update because I haven’t opened an app?
This is expected behavior in any package management application. If someone uses too much cut them off like you would any other repo.
There is no Linux distribution that downloads updates immediately either. I don’t know if you’re ignorant, or just an idiot, but auto updates in Linux distros run on cron jobs, so the load would be balanced anyway because not everyone is in the same time zone. Same for consoles like your Xbox.
Try having millions of concurrent users all trying to update at the same time.
A single dota 2 update could use around 2-3% of the global internet bandwidth.
And this is how the prisoner’s dilemma is lost.
So you want to DDoS their CDN so you never get your update. You seem very smart.
A billion dollar company giving 2 fucks about their bottom line is probably how they become a billion dollar company in the first place.
They could also finally allow you to start games without updating.
Well since they have this now, you can just schedule updates to run at night.
That’s not the same unless something has recently changed. The scheduling just stops it from scheduling them during the day, it doesn’t make sure everything downloads in a single night.
And even then, that’s not a “do all it right now” button
There is definitely an option to have it auto-update. I don’t know about scheduling.
still don’t know why that is missing. it’s such a weird UX
Finally, this is super useful.
Especially if you have slow internet
My imperfect solution of downloading on PC over time and using the network transfer feature might still be better suited for the way my internet speed and quota works, but this is great for small updates and that kind of thing.
Now your Steam Deck can have a black screen while it does the transfer. Everyone wins!
Hopefully this leads to being able to queue game installs remotely without the Deck having to be on. And if it can wake up when charging to do the same, even better!
Yeah, like how a docked Switch can have downloads sent to it from the web browser eShop, and it’ll periodically wake up from sleep and check for downloads by default.
Honestly, I was hoping this was what Valve was working on in the first place… but what they’re giving us is nice to have as well.
And thanks to the Next Fests, I crave this remote install queueing feature more and more lately!
Screen off ≠ off. The deck will always have to be on and out of sleep mode to do anything like that.
Well obviously.
Even still, it is perfectly feasible for Valve to implement an install queue that we can add to from a phone that starts downloading only when a given Deck turns on. Maybe even put a device’s required or scheduled game updates on that interface too for us to manage and for the Deck to pull on wake.
Secondly, the Deck’s might not actually have any hardware to turn itself on on a schedule like phones do, but at least if it had a remote download queue, we could automate sending our own Decks WoL packets every now and then and have them automatically install new games.
Plus, the Decks can turn themselves on from S4 when plugging in at least, so maybe even with the current hardware there are things Valve can do here that I can’t imagine.
Having a power-saving download mode is only the first step. There’s still a lot of useful features we’ve long been requesting left to do that can be achieved, and I’m hopeful more of them will!
Well obviously.
You may be surprised how not obvious this is to some people, hah. But your suggestions are interesting. I feel like Valve is just constantly adding surprising features with the on-board tech. Would be cool if that stuff got added.
What’s the point of this? Genuine question.
It probably supports WoL already?
It does supports WoL. Well, the OLED one supports WoL over WiFi, the LCD doesn’t. But it doesn’t support queuing an install on a currently offline device.
Even disregarding the tens of minutes it takes for the app to realize that my Deck has come online after I wake it up for me to be able to install a game on it from my phone, i can’t really WoL it when I’m not home.
