How Valve will ease internet connections for Steam Deck users

Valve is rolling out a beta update for the Steam Deck allowing games to be installed more quickly and efficiently.

This feature will be especially useful for those with a slow internet connection, but not only. It will also be practical for data transfer on a local network.

Steam Deck finally joins the local network

Since its release a year ago, the Steam Deck has displayed, despite its promising finery, a nasty defect: downloading and installing games only go through Wi-Fi. A double penalty for slow connections, both wireless downloading can sometimes be unstable.

Valve is therefore finally trying to overcome this problem by deploying a beta update for Steam and its PC/console hybrid. Among other things, this allows the Steam Deck to join a local network in order to be able to install games that are already available without having to download them.

To try this feature, you will therefore have to go and get the beta update. From there, things should happen relatively easily and automatically, as Valve explains in the thread above.

How Steam LAN Transfer Works

Once the beta update is installed, Steam will indeed check if there are game files to transfer from one device to another before contacting a content server to proceed with the operation. If one of the two connected devices leaves the local network during the transfer process, the game download will take over.

This beta feature defaults to LAN-bound devices logged into the same Steam account. However, it is possible to configure everything to be able to transfer files between family members or friends, as long as you stay on the same local network (like in a LAN).

As this is a beta update, its contributions still have a few minor bugs and limitations, which Valve returns to in an exhaustive FAQ, cited in source below.

Source : Steam