It seemed for a long time, I was pretty much SoL in trying to fully enjoy the Steam
Deck the way I want to enjoy it. But I’ve been trying to come up with some theories as to why this is happening, and how I might be able to possibly work around the problem to still do what I wanna do.
But at the end, it’s me trying to contact Steam Support in hopes they have the fucking answer. They’re the ones that built the damn thing. They should know why. But I’ve also discovered something that draws me closer to the root of the problem.. streaming videos don’t load with the deck– not even Twitch streams load. How I found this out was trying to join Stray as he was in his movie world, and I noticed the video player was set
to Stream.
Went back to my homeworld and tried to load a Twitch stream of a friend of mine, and it too got stuck in a loading loop until failing to load the video.
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This is actually a relief. It proves what those movie worlds are doing (or have) isn’t what’s causing the issue. It’s a much deeper problem.
It’s something Valve is doing to the deck that’s causing this shit to happen. And it may be very well be Arch Linux; the engine that SteamOS uses. And I’m hoping by contacting Steam Support, they might be able to fix this issue on the software end.
Looking even deeper, asking Google ‘Does Arch Linux support streaming video’, I definitely see a few reports of it “not working anymore” but there’s workarounds for it. So surely this could be fixed with an update from Valve.
Hell, this could just be a hardware limitation. And if it is, then.. then I guess the deck goes into a drawer, never to be touched again, because it’ll be a piece of garbage to me. I can easily just get on VRChat with my computer again, and actually watch videos without issue. Won’t ever ‘need’ the deck again, if it’s going to be a piece of worthless shit that made me regret buying it.
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So, Steam Deck, Steam Support is your last chance to continue my use of you. If they don’t know what to tell me about you except “we’ll send you a replacement if that’ll help” (which they really won’t as they’ll expect me to have a printer/car/a FedEx Store that doesn’t
fucking EXIST around me in a 10 mile radius (and send mine to them first))… then you’re good as garbage.
There’s also a very slight possibility.. the VRChat Team might had fabricated their claim their game is fully 100% verified to work on the Steam Deck (as VR doesn’t work on the deck).
I found a few entries back in 2020 about this, that VRChat just doesn’t work at all anymore since the EAC update. However they seem to have ‘fixed’ this since then, I guess? Because the game runs perfectly for me, except that one issue. But I didn’t get this deck just to talk to my friends and that’s it (when I have a phone that can do that for me
aka Mobile Discord).
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EDIT: Steam Support got back to me, and they only glanced over my issue instead of fully reading it. It was that copy/paste list of stuff for me to check. The first one was to make sure SteamOS has all of its updates, which I had already stated to them it does.
They also asked me to ‘check integrity of game files’, but that wouldn’t help at all as I’ve noticed it ever since I installed VRChat on the deck.
But the last one they asked, did sort of intrigue me. “Check to see if the issue is happening in other games”. And the only other social VR game I know that has a video player, is CVR.
Almost immediately, a thought from the past filled my mind. I remember hanging out
with Jusper, when I was testing my living room prop with a video player. And I clearly remembered him saying how the video player “doesn’t work in Linux”.
Hmmm…
Ask Jusper if he still remembers. Maybe, just maybe he too has a Steam Deck. And he would definitely, finally give me the answers I’ve been seeking for months.
And he has. “Proton and the windows version of cvr dont work well with AVPro”.
Huh. What is ‘AVPro’? After doing a quick Google search, it’s pretty much the framework the CVR video player (and maybe even VRChat) uses.
I asked him “can Valve fix this?” He said “likely yes. But it’s not a high priority.”
So.. that’s unfortunate. But I finally have my answer. Turned my deck off and put it in its carry case. getting ready to shove it in a drawer. Until I said “I’ve been told I can dual boot and get Windows on it, but others say not to that ‘Windows runs like shit on the deck.'”
He said “it runs fine, I have it” …looks like I might not be SoL afterall.
And when I told him I have three USB flash drives, he said I only need one of them (with the use of a program called ‘GParted‘ “or something” he said).
It’s good dual booting is still an option around the problem, but I still don’t fully know how viable of an option it is.
How will the controls work outside of SteamOS? How stable would it be? How would the ping/FPS be on this hardware, when not being ran through Proton? These questions keep going through my mind.