SteamOS is continuing its slow march to fuller support on a wider variety of non-Valve hardware. This weekend’s release of the SteamOS 3.8.25 Beta includes “initial gamepad support” for a few recent gaming handhelds and improved support for a few others.
Those newly supported handhelds include MSI’s Claw 8 EX AI+, the extremely expensive, extremely powerful handheld built around Intel’s Arc G3 processor that launched this summer. While SteamOS has long included beta support for “other AMD powered handhelds,” Valve has only recently been working on offering compatibility with Intel-based handhelds like the MSI Claw line. This weekend’s update suggests the company hasn’t abandoned those efforts and that Intel chips aren’t being left out of the SteamOS conversation.
SteamOS 3.8.25 also newly supports the controllers built into Ayaneo’s Android-focused Pocket S2 and the more recently released Windows-based Konkr Fit. Valve also says the new OS offers “improved support” for older MSI Claw devices and the OneXPlayer line of portable gaming PCs.
This weekend’s update follows June’s SteamOS 3.8 update, which stressed “improved compatibility with recent Intel and AMD platforms.” That update specifically called out improved controller support on handhelds from the likes of GPD Win, Anbernic, and OrangePi, as well as improvements for various Lenovo Legion Go, MSI Claw, and OneXPlayer devices.
So far, the Lenovo Legion Go S remains the only non-Valve device to sport the full “powered by SteamOS” branding, indicating full compatibility with Valve’s take on Linux. But these kinds of updates suggest the company is still interested in getting its bespoke OS working well on plenty of other devices.
Elsewhere in the new SteamOS update, Valve has updated the Linux driver powering the new Steam Controller, allowing it to work with “native controller applications” even when Steam is not running. That should be welcome news to SteamOS players who like to launch into Desktop mode to run emulators or other Linux-native non-Steam games.