Nearly half a year ago I have made a decision that I am not buying a Steam Machine. See, half a year is a lot of time in the current capitalist world. A company announces a product, the hype get properly generated, and then the product doesn’t ship. Valve’s apologists will argue that it’s not Valve’s fault that the hardware didn’t ship, but the state of consumer electronics’ prices in 2026. And while they certainly wouldn’t be wrong — the fact remains that the hardware didn’t ship in time for me to get it with my hype money.

No waiting required

As I argued in the video linked in the first paragraph, I have had no trouble building my own Steam Machine with parts that somewhat resemble the actual Steam Machine specs. The end result is that I get to install the Steam OS at least 6 months before consumers get their hands on the actual games console. As a content creator I get to test the expected feel of the product that doesn’t exist yet, I get to set my expectations without spending one EUR, and most importantly I get to play games on a machine that is yet to become a reality.

However, there is one creeping thought in the back of my mind that just doesn’t let go. I am not sure if it is the consumer in me trying to get ahold of a shiny new toy or is it the legit worry about the state of the gaming industry nowadays. I certainly hope it is the latter and I wish to tell you more about it.

For the past 10 years I have been playing video games on all kinds of devices. Starting from the weakest possible console, such as Xbox One S, across the PlayStation Pro variant all the way up to Blackwell-powered PC that I have right now. And the one thing I noticed across all my gaming experiences is that game developers have became lazy. In part I believe the advent of Unreal and Unity engines are to blame, but only indirectly. See, these tools are not inherently bad. The problem is that these tools drastically lower the bar of entry into games making and the market is now flooded with non-programmers who call themselves game developers. And the scary part is that I am not talking about indie scene. I am actually talking about AAA companies who value cash above quality. Why bother optimizing the game’s code if you can simply tell gamers to purchase a more expensive hardware to compensate for your unwillingness to invest into making the game work on a hardware that gamers can afford?

The knight in shiny armor

The way I see the purchase of the Steam Machine is basically this. I buy the device, Valve gets to tell developers that they have users, and developers then decide that leaving the money on the table is not a good business model so they optimize their games for the Valve’s hardware. And since this hardware’s specs are pretty much an entry level PC — in turn this means better performance across the board of the entire gaming hardware line-up. In this day and age where Ai companies have made gaming hardware a lot harder to purchase I believe that the best course of action is to, quite literally, force game developers to become programmers.

If this video and post resonated with you, share it with someone who has Nvidia 5090.