this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2025
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Steam Hardware

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A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.

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[–] jokro@feddit.org 21 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (6 children)

Alternatively i can just download them on each device and have better load times?

At least the games i play are small enough (<150GB each). And i dont need more than few them, one is enough usually.

[–] anguo@piefed.ca 41 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

You consider 150GB small?!? The biggest games I have downloaded were around 80GB, and I found that excessive.

[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] darkreader2636@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I still find tf2 at 32gb enormous

[–] Orygin@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago

Considering the amount of maps and models added over the years, I don't really find that enormous

[–] jokro@feddit.org 4 points 3 weeks ago

I dont think it's small, but small enough so that several of them fit on the 512GB SSD

[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 weeks ago

call of duty player, probably?

[–] mereo@piefed.ca 21 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

1 Gbit internet connections are not yet universal. And some parts of the world still have slow internet.

[–] ashughes@feddit.uk 5 points 3 weeks ago

Yup! Sitting here on 70 down / 18 up, fastest money can by around here. If I’m going to play a game I haven’t downloaded yet I usually have to plan a day in advance.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 weeks ago

Copy it over the network instead so its on the internal memory of both devices. Uses your fast LAN instead of slow internet.

[–] ElectroLisa@piefed.blahaj.zone 15 points 3 weeks ago

Steam supports local network transfers, they added this feature a few months after the Steam Deck was announced.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Or if they implement a copy feature, move the SD card over and copy a game to internal, so you can more quickly transfer over a game without removing it from the SD card.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Steam also supports local file transfers for game downloads. Like if your PC has a game downloaded and you start to download it on your Deck, the Deck will ask if you want to download it directly from your PC. It means your download speed is primarily limited by your LAN and PC hardware, (which is probably at least gigabit these days), instead of whatever arbitrary speed cap your ISP has implemented.

But technically speaking, carrying an SD card across the house would likely have higher data speeds. The latency sucks, but the bandwidth is only limited by the size of the card and how quickly you’re able to walk across the house. Hell, if you have a stack of large hard drives and it only takes you a few seconds to walk across a small living area, your total measured bandwidth could be measured in tens of terabytes per second. There’s an old joke that a carrier pigeon flying across town with a stack of SD cards would have higher bandwidth than any modern network.

[–] UltraMagnus@startrek.website 2 points 3 weeks ago

It's good for rural areas and areas without many internet options. Even my internet isn't really that bad, and it would still take a few hours to download a game that large. It would be convenient to just take an SD card from one device and put it into another.

I'm glad that they're thinking about these edge case scenarios. Valve is good about this- for example, I've never needed any of steam's accessibility options, but I'm glad they are there.

[–] scala@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago

Correct. You can also share the download from one machine to another on your WiFi. And even across your friends(for faster torrent-like download).

You can also use your PC as a cloud host and the frame/machine streams the game off that PC rather than needing all the graphics powered the device itself.