Steam

The Khronos Group, the stewards of various open protocols like OpenGL, Vulkan, OpenXR and more just revealed a new tool for XR (VR / AR) developers.

What is OpenXR exactly? As The Khronos Group explain: "OpenXR is a royalty-free, open standard that provides a common set of APIs for developing XR applications that run across a wide range of AR and VR devices. This reduces the time and cost required for developers to adapt solutions to individual XR platforms while also creating a larger market of easily supported applications for device manufacturers that adopt OpenXR".

So it's the open standard for VR games to be built with, to sum it up easily for you. It's what Valve actually focus on nowadays for SteamVR.

Kernel-level anti-cheat feels like it's everywhere now, and will remain a thorn in Valve's side for the new Steam Machine powered by SteamOS Linux.

On Linux, there's no kernel-level mode available for anti-cheats like they would use on Windows. I know plenty of readers, and gamers across the net probably see it as a benefit due to privacy concerns, and that's fine - but it doesn't change what a lot of people want to play that can't.

This is something many bigger games simply don't want to pull away from including the likes of Call of Duty, Vanguard from Riot, EA Javelin for Battlefield and so on. While we do have some anti-cheat vendors that support Linux like Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye (and a few others), it's user-mode with no kernel-level and many developers really don't like that.

Resistance is futile.

Today was a big day for gamers as Valve just introduced three products: the Steam Controller, the Steam Machine, and the Steam Frame. When you add this alongside the Steam Deck, I think it's safe to say that Valve is about to win the next console generation.

Linus Tech Tips's first look of Steam Frame.

For a while now Valve have been tweaking Steam store pages, including making them a fair bit wider which is now actually live everywhere for all users.

This was originally available via the Steam Beta Client for Desktop since August, and rolled out in September on Desktop for everyone but now they've also put all the changes on the web store too not just the Steam Client. The pages have been widened from 940 pixels to now 1200 pixels, which may not be huge news but it definitely makes a difference. Especially for screenshots, since you'll see them at a higher resolution now too.

With this change the trailer / screenshot section also gained some new tricks with new viewing modes between a theatre mode and full-screen, with controls to scroll through them that's especially nice when looking over new games to just quickly tap through full screenshots directly.

Valve released the latest stable system update with SteamOS 3.7.17 now available bringing bug fixes, but also disabled wake-on-bluetooth for Steam Deck LCD.

The experimental wake-on-bluetooth support for Steam Deck LCD has been repeatedly problematic, being enabled and disabled a few times now. Hopefully Valve can figure out the issues with it soon so all users can benefit from it, as it's especially useful when docking a Steam Deck.

Previously only available in VR, THRASHER is the mind-melting follow-up to Thumper and it's confirmed to arrive on Steam on November 7th. It will come with full Steam Deck support and optimisations, with the developer noting it should run at a smooth "90fps".

The game has won multiple awards, so it should be interesting to see how it makes the jump from being VR-only to a flat-screen experience. To be clear though, the Steam release supports both VR and normal play. In the press release they noted "It has been reworked to capture the magic of the VR version but shine on traditional platforms. Swoop around the space eel with a thumbstick or your mouse and thrash through the chaos with the help of a new dash ability. The visuals have also been upgraded, taking advantage of the power of PCs" which includes:

Don't bother sitting down because you'll just stand up when you hear this: a ton of games were released on Steam this year. Valve's store has seen nearly 13,000 game launches since January 1, 2025, according to Steam data hound Gamalytic, and a majority of those games went straight under the couch to be forgotten for the rest of time like lost batteries.

Gamalytic regularly updates its data but these particular milestones and thresholds were recently flagged on social media by Artur Smiarowski, creator of turn-based roguelike RPG Soulash and its markedly more popular sequel Soulash 2. As of today, Steam has seen an estimated 12,732 games released in 2025.

Valve are still pushing their Steam Deck ahead with many developers now adding their own special dedicated Steam Deck Verified page.

These special areas on Steam give an uncluttered page that highlights how well a game can run on Steam Deck, it's a really neat idea to help cut through the noise. Just the game, a trailer and a link to the store page for the Steam Deck and for the game. This gives developers an easy link to advertise that their game is fully supported on the Linux powered Steam Deck.