Valve trademarks the ‘Steam Frame,’ but what the heck is it?

After the smash hit that is the Steam Deck, all eyes are on Valve for its next hardware move. Another stab at virtual reality? A console to take on Sony and Nintendo? (Oh, Microsoft, what’s up, didn’t see you there.) A new trademark filing for the “Steam Frame” has gamers and press alike turning the speculation up to 11. And yeah, I couldn’t resist doing some of my own.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has a public filing for the Steam Frame name, assigned to Valve Corporation and its corporate office in Bellevue, Washington, and began on September 2nd. According to the documentation, it’s applied to “the categories of computer game consoles for recreational game playing; video game consoles; video game accessories, namely, controllers for video games.” A separate filing listed “computer networking hardware; computer peripherals; computer hardware and computer software for the reproduction, processing, and streaming of audio, video, data, text, and multimedia content.” Both of them were spotted by a Reddit poster.

That’s a lot of corporate legalese, but “computer game consoles” and “video game accessories” are hard to miss. I’m instantly pondering the possibilities of a set-top-box version of the Steam Deck, a second go at Valve’s original Steam Machine PC-console design, or possibly even a next generation Steam Link streamer device. There have been rumors in this area lately — entirely unsubstantiated, I hasten to add — around the “Valve Fremont” name and some hardware showing up in benchmarks.

I don’t personally believe that this Freemont device is heading towards a consumer product. The more likely explanation to me is that it’s developer hardware, being distributed to high-profile devs and publishers to help them get their games prepped for the Steam Deck and similar handhelds like the Lenovo Legion Go S. Or at least that was my position two days ago, when a viewer asked the question on The Full Nerd podcast.

But a developer box doesn’t need a trademark filing, which definitely indicates some kind of finished product, meant for consumers or otherwise. Beyond that, we really know nothing about the “Frame” name. It’s been speculated that it’s connected to Valve’s “Deckard” headset based on a few lines of code in SteamVR’s interface (as PCGamer notes), but that also seems somewhat tenuous to me. And I’d love to believe that Valve is going to push its weight around and make another drive for VR gaming.

I hate to bring the room down, but we simply don’t have enough information to make better guesses at this point. The only thing I can say for sure is that, flush with cash and riding high on singlehandedly booming the handheld PC gaming segment, Valve is certainly primed to make another big swing. I can’t wait to see if it hits.

Further reading: VR gaming isn’t dead yet! Valve’s Deckard headset is our last hope