Valve helps Raspberry Pi owners build their own Steam Link box
The Steam Link box is dead, long live the Steam Link box.
Steam Link boxes are no more. The simple black micro PCs designed to let you play games in the living room -- or anywhere else in the house away from your gaming rig -- is sold out everywhere and it seems Valve has no plans to produce more. The Steam Link app continues to live on in mobile devices and smart TVs, so it's not the end of days, but this doesn't offer the same latency-mitigating clout as Ethernet-wired hardware. Valve, however, is offering an alternative, and it comes in the form of Raspberry Pi.
On Monday, Valve's Sam Lantinga announced that the Steam Link app is now available in beta form on the Raspberry Pi 3 and 3 B+. Just make sure you're running the "Stretch" version of Pi's OS (which has been default anyway since August 2017) and drop in a few lines (here). And voilà, you've got a fully functional DIY Steam Link box, easy to connect with a range of gamepads and at $35 probably a lot cheaper than upgrading your router for stutter-free gameplay. And of course, the Raspberry Pi has a bunch of uses beyond being a game streaming box, too.
