In a recent interview, Valve confirmed that it will support Asus’ ROG Ally gaming handhelds and allow users to take advantage of SteamOS.
Speaking to The Verge, Valve designer Lawrence Yang confirms that SteamOS support will become available on ROG Ally in the future. The conversation regarding SteamOS first popped up when a line in Valve’s recent SteamOS release notes was discovered.
“Added support for extra ROG Ally keys,” the notes read. At the time, it was unknown what the “extra” ROG Ally keys could be about as SteamOS wasn’t known to have support on the Asus gaming handheld. However, Yang sheds some light on the situation and company plans.
“The note about ROG Ally keys is related to third-party device support for SteamOS. The team is continuing to work on adding support for additional handhelds on SteamOS,” Yang told The Verge.
As of now, Asus ships its ROG Ally and the new ROG Ally X with Windows 11 as the default OS. ROG Ally is optimized for Microsoft’s Windows and has been since launch. Yang’s comments don’t seem to indicate that’ll ever change in the future. However, that doesn’t mean users won’t be able to install SteamOS themselves and turn their Windows-based handheld into a dual-boot system.
That all being said, Valve may be taking its time to get SteamOS on competitive devices. As for Windows, we’re preparing to make the remaining Windows drivers for Steam Deck OLED available (you might have seen that we are prepping firmware for the Bluetooth driver), Yang says. “There’s no update on the timing for dual boot support—it’s still a priority, but we haven’t been able to get to it just yet.”
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