Valve engineer Yazan Aldehayyat has stated the company's disinterest in creating exclusive games for its hardware, emphasizing a long-term vision of fostering innovation and growth across the entire PC platform. Instead of engaging in an "exclusives war" similar to those seen with PlayStation and Xbox, Valve's objective is to maintain an open ecosystem.
Aldehayyat, speaking to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, explained that Valve's approach is driven by a desire to support other hardware manufacturers. "We want it to still be viable for other hardware manufacturers to offer things like the Steam Machine either with higher performance or a different feature set," he said. This strategy extends to Valve's own hardware, such as the Steam Deck. The company prices its hardware competitively, sometimes at cost, to encourage wider adoption and innovation from third parties. Valve engineer Loup Griffais noted that such third-party innovations could become universal, benefiting the entire PC experience and subsequently driving game sales.
"We're much more interested in having the whole PC catalog as our 'launch exclusive,'" Griffais added. "Restricting where people can play a game I don't think is a great model, at least for us." This philosophy means that even Valve's own software, like the free Steam Deck pack-in game Aperture Desk Job, is designed to be playable on any device that supports a controller, rather than being locked to specific hardware.
The success of SteamOS, a Linux-based operating system with a console-like interface, has been a key factor in legitimizing the living room PC category. Valve supports this by embracing third-party hardware that improves the Steam machine experience, as seen with devices like the Lenovo Legion Go, which runs SteamOS and was scored higher than the Steam Deck by PC Gamer. This open approach aligns with Valve's business model, which benefits from its marketplace dominance and the significant cut it takes from game sales on the Steam platform, regardless of the hardware used.