Steam Frame’s library keeps growing as Valve ramps up for release by adding a certified hit
Play your cards right
🤲 Valve just certified one of the best 2D games for the Steam Frame
🃏 Deckbuilder Balatro has become the latest game to be designated as ‘Great on Frame’
👍 It joins the likes of Portal 2, The Lab and Ancient Dungeons as certified titles
📦 Valve also just received a huge shipment of the device as it prepares for a seemingly imminent launch
Valve has just added one of the best 2D games to its repertoire of certified Steam Frame titles.
As per Steam Hardware Updates on X, Valve has certified addictive deckbuilder Balatro for the Steam Frame, and added it to the new ‘Great on Frame’ category page it recently created.
This comes after news that the headset got its first certified game, Portal 2, and Valve certified its own VR showcase games for the headset with Aperture Hand Labs and The Lab.
Plus, Valve also certified three more games for the headset as part of its ever-increasing total as it seeks to show the headset should be just as capable of traditional VR as it is for playing your entire Steam library essentially through two micro OLED screens.
Valve also recently got one of its biggest Steam Frame shipments yet, with nearly two tonnes of headsets and controllers coming into Valve’s US warehouse.
We’re now up to 18 shipments as Valve imported a further 19 metric tonnes of the device into its US warehouse as part of one of the more recent updates, which Steam Hardware Updates thought equated to “tens of thousands of Steam Frame units in box ready for shipment”, as it keeps getting stock ready for the hotly anticipated Steam Frame pre-order.
Valve keeps working on the backend for the Frame as it puts seemingly a lot of finishing touches to the OS and all the rest of it, such as finishing up “Gamepad Mode” for playing 2D games such as Balatro and Portal 2.
This all points to a launch being very close, it would seem – on that note, the Steam Hardware Updates account has stated that they expect the wait between the Steam Machine’s release and Steam Frame’s announcement to be shorter than it was for the Steam Controller and the Steam Machine.
For reference, the gap between the Steam Controller announcement and the Steam Machine’s was 49 days (between May 4 and June 22).
Both this account and other insiders have indicated all the prep work being done suggests that the Steam Frame could launch in the next few weeks, as the updates follow a similar pattern to when Valve was prepping the Steam Machine before its launch a few weeks ago.
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Reece Bithrey is a journalist with bylines for Trusted Reviews, Digital Foundry, PC Gamer, TechRadar and more. He also has his own blog, UNTITLED, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in International History and Politics in 2023.