[eugeniub]

I'm happy with what Valve is doing now, but as a whole, the fact that Steam OS is a Linux distro doesn't necessarily mean that Steam OS / Steam Deck won't become locked down in the same manner in the future. Android itself is open source and Linux-based.

[m4rtink]

One overlooked aspect of why Steam Desk is quite a game changer is the fat that it's the first actually open handheld gaming platforms.

All the predecessors (Nintendo DS, Playstation Vita, Nintendo Switch, etc.) have been regular consoles with heavy weight locked down walled garden, where all content had to pass a lot of byzantine review and respect least common denominator content rules and censorship.

With Steam deck there is finally a handheld platform where a much wider selection of games can be installed from itself that has much less insane content rules or totally separately directly from developers to users. Another community that has been mostly banned from consoles is moders - there are basically no games that support modding on consoles, yet its very popular in many games on PC. And finally, we have a handheld that can run games with mods!

So I would hope that this will turn out to be a big selling point of Steam Deck & that affected communities (independent content creators & modding community) would make sure they are not cut off again like they were on consoles.

[zamalek]

Valve have been pretty good about sticking to their "hackable" guns so far. With exception to the Link, everything of theirs is abnormally tweakable. Newell also seems to understand how tenuous PC gamer loyalty can be (hell, it could be argued that he sowed the seeds of that mentality).

[WhyNotHugo]

They have no reason to lock it down.

While competition focuses on locking down, DRM, anti-piracy, etc, Valve just focuses on selling in-game hats.

In more seriousness: They also have good synergy with the Linux ecosystem, and locking out kind ends up working both ways.