Valve Lets Raspberry Pi Takes Over Where the Steam Link Left Off

PC gaming remains popular, despite the traction gained by consoles. As any PC gamer will tell you, a PC offers a better, more customizable experience. The downside is that you’re relegated to gaming in whatever room you keep your computer in, and most of us want to be sitting comfortably on our couch when we play games. The Steam Link box made that possible by letting you stream PC games from Steam on your computer to your TV. But, due to poor sales, Valve has discontinued the Steam Link. Luckily, the Raspberry Pi is taking on the mantle with a Valve-developed Steam Link app.

On November 19th, Valve announced that the current inventory of Steam Link hardware was almost sold out. They made it clear they’d continue to support the hardware, but implied that they wouldn’t be producing any more Steam Link boxes. Despite the low sales of the Steam Link box, that announcement was met with disappointment from the PC gaming crowd, and the remaining inventory was quickly snatched up.

For those of you who were unable to get your hands on one, there is a new solution available. Yesterday, December 3rd, Valve announced the beta release of the Steam Link app for the Raspberry Pi. The software should run well in Raspbian Stretch on either a Raspberry Pi 3 or Raspberry Pi 3 B+. That will essentially turn your Raspberry Pi into a Steam Link box, which you can connect to your TV in order to stream games from Steam running on your PC.

Your gaming PC will do the heavy lifting of actually running the game, and only the audio and video will be sent to the Raspberry Pi, with control inputs being sent back to your PC. An Ethernet connection for both the Raspberry Pi and your PC is definitely recommended, but early reports indicate performance is good. The beta release is available now, so you can go ahead and take it for a spin yourself.