Valve Finally Unveils Steam Deck Dock At Tokyo Game Show To A Luke-Warm Reception

In August of 2021 Valve announced the Steam Deck. In February of 2022 the portable gaming device started shipping, and was ultimately met with mostly positive reviews. This year at the Tokyo Game Show (TGS), the Steam Deck has been the main focus for Valve, as its booth design definitely highlights. One big part of Steam Deck experience that some would argue has been missing, however, is a Steam Deck Dock, but at TGS, Valve finally revealed a final, working version it at their booth.

As its name implies, the Steam Deck Dock is a docking station. It allows owners of the system to set their Steam Deck into the dock and expand it with additional IO, including wired ethernet, display outputs and a few extra USB ports. It effectively turns the Steam Deck into a small form factor system or typical game console. Unfortunately, the development of the dock has been affected by COVID-related shortages and other issues, according to Valve. Of course, this hasn't stopped third parties from making their own docks for the system, which may have stolen some of Valve's thunder at the show.
Interestingly, during the development of the Steam Deck, Valve decided to shift gears and enhance the capabilities of the dock, moving from USB 2.0 on a couple of ports to USB 3.1 Gen 2. That particular hardware upgrade delayed the release a bit, but was a worthwhile update in our opinion. However, the dock lacks any usable USB-C ports, since the two that are present are required to actually connect to the Steam Deck and power the Dock. It also seems like some users on the Reddit thread that posted the photos from the show are indicating there are currently some software bugs to work out at the moment.

While the official dock was delayed, Valve stated that it had improved compatibility with third-party USB-C hubs and other docking systems, but many users are not entirely happy with the results according to many posts on-line.


Despite the delays, third-party solutions, and apparent compatibility bugs that need to be worked out, Valve is still pressing forward and appears closer to releasing the official Steam Deck Dock. Hopefully the manufacturing and software issues will be resolved before Valve ships the product, because there seems to be a lot of pent up demand for it.

Image Sources: Reddit User u/ElderberryLarge9104