Valve are updating Half-Life and more for Steam Deck
Play Portal portable
Valve are working to upgrade a number of their more popular games for the Steam Deck, optimising controls and interfaces to play better on their upcoming portable powerhouse, the Steam Deck. The Half-Life series, Dota 2, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive, either already have or will receive upgrades designed to make them "better experiences".
In an interview with cheery RPS fanzine PC Gamer, several Valve designers explained their efforts to improve the experience of games on the handled PC. Valve already added gamepad support to Dota 2, and more tweaks are planned for others.
"Even if the core experience in Half-Life games is pretty polished with a controller, a lot of things around the experience tend to either get left out or not be brought to the same level of polish over time," designer Greg Coomer told PCG.
Likewise, PCG say CS:GO will polish the game's existent gyro aiming and tweak elements like the radial menus. "The team is really giving that renewed polish and design intention," Coomer said.
Valve designer Lawrence Yang added that the Portal games are already good on portable, though they may tweak Left 4 Dead 2 too. "I think we do want to look at all of the Valve catalog to make sure things are good on Deck," he told PCG.
Coomer also told PCG that Valve still expect to launch the system in February 2022, having previously needed to delay it due to the global computer chip shortage.
"We do feel like we're on track for that," he said. "We're still bummed that we had to move from end of this year to beginning of next. But yeah, all the signs are pointing to us being able to ship in February."