Valve quietly discontinues Steam Link hardware production

Valve is quietly discontinuing Steam Link, the in-home streaming box it first launched in late 2015. A low-key announcement on Valve's Steam Link news page suggests that production of new units has ceased and that Valve is currently selling off the rest of its "almost sold out" inventory in the US, after selling out completely in Europe. Valve says it will continue to offer support for existing Steam Link hardware.

The $50 Steam Link was designed for streaming games from a local gaming PC to an HDTV in the same house, a job it did pretty well provided your networking hardware was up to it. In recent months, though, Valve has shifted its focus away from dedicated streaming hardware and toward mobile apps that can provide the same feature.

Apple is currently blocking the release of a Steam Link app designed for Apple TV and iOS devices, but similar apps are available for Samsung Galaxy devices and other Android phones (in beta). Steam users have been able to stream to laptops on the same network since 2014, as well.

The discontinuation of Steam Link hardware wasn't a complete surprise, given that Valve was briefly selling the playing-card-deck-sized devices for a closeout price of $2.50 earlier this year. And though Valve insists it's "still working hard" on Linux gaming and bringing Windows game compatibility to SteamOS, Valve's much ballyhooed circa-2015 hardware initiative has not made a huge impact on the marketplace.

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