Nvidia just fixed a major Steam Deck issue. What will happen next?

There’s been a flurry of exciting handheld gaming news lately, but one story got buried a little under the mountain of Legion Go S details and Switch 2 rumors. That would be the announcement that Nvidia is developing a native GeForce NOW app for Steam Deck.

“Trillion dollar corporation often derided by the Linux community develops native software for a single Linux gaming rig” was certainly not on my 2025 bingo card. But I’m so glad it’s happening.

Benefits of Nvidia GeForce NOW for Steam Deck

GeForce NOW is a cloud gaming service that lets you play games you’ve purchased on platforms like Steam, Ubisoft, EA and Epic Games on almost any internet-connected device. The point is, you don’t need an insanely expensive gaming PC for your games to look like they’re being played on one.

For low-powered handhelds like the Steam Deck, this presents a number of potential benefits. It offers the convenience of playing your non-Steam library without a bunch of workarounds, tweaks, or instructions. It also opens the door to enjoying certain games that won’t even run on Valve’s hardware. Plus, your battery won’t melt and you can enjoy these games streamed at up to 4K/60FPS to an external monitor or TV connected to the Steam Deck.

Of course, the official way to it currently installing Nvidia’s GeForce NOW on Steam Deck involves going to desktop mode, downloading a script, extracting that script, and then installing it.

(It would be fascinating to know how many people have even launched Desktop Mode a single time on Steam Decks, but I suspect it’s a very low percentage).

While we’re not yet sure how the native app, which Nvidia says is scheduled to ship “later this year,” will be delivered to Steam Deck users, it’s sure to be a more elegant and simple. And that’s a big deal.

But why does this matter? What kind of impact could it have? To present a broader perspective, I asked some prominent members of the Linux community to chime in with their thoughts.

Thomas Crider (aka GloriousEggroll) | Nobara, Red Hat

GloriousEggroll needs no introduction to people who follow the Linux gaming space closely. In short, he is a wizard who works at Red Hat by day and makes the Linux game better by night. He is the creator of Proton-GE as well as the Nobara Linux game distribution, and he contributes to Lutris.

Here’s what he told me:

“I think it’s a great thing that SteamOS is becoming a bigger target. By becoming more mainstream, it’s giving vendors real reason to develop and take advantage of the consumer Linux applications and drivers they can offer. These contributions from other vendors in turn make the Linux ecosystem much stronger for the end user. By supporting SteamOS you are supporting Linux and open source, because much of what contributes to SteamOS can be ported to other distributions.

There is an increasing ripple effect on both sides – reasons for vendors and users to increase support and usage respectively. I and many other Linux users are incredibly grateful for all the work that has gone into SteamOS, and we’re excited to see what the future holds!”

Gardiner Bryant | Linux content creator

Originally known as The Linux Gamer, Bryant is a popular figure covering Linux on his YouTube channel. He is also a game developer and president of media production house Heavy Element.

Here are his thoughts on Nvidia’s commitment to Steam Deck:

“Nvidia’s GeForce Now native app proves their faith in Linux gaming. Not only in the future of the ecosystem as it continues to grow, but crucially in the financial reality that supporting Linux games can be profitable and worthwhile.

A native GeForce NOW app fills one of the few remaining gaps in the Linux library: allowing gamers to play multiplayer titles from shady Linux developers that lack anti-cheat support. This is to be noted and I think it should be applauded!”.

Liam Dawe | Owner and Creator, GamingOnLinux

Finally, we have Liam Dawe, a veteran in the Linux gaming space who has been professionally reporting on Linux gaming for 15 years.

“For Nvidia, it makes sense. Everyone can clearly see that Steam Deck continues to sell well, and with SteamOS coming to more devices, the business side of it also makes more sense now.

As with all industry shifts, there will be more to come. This move by Nvidia is smart; get in early and tell others how it’s done. Although, it remains to be seen how easy they make it. Ideally, getting it as a live app on Steam would make it better for everyone on all platforms. The next best thing would be Flathub, where the developer can put their app on Steam Deck and most other Linux distributions.

I would like to express my enthusiastic gratitude to Liam, Thomas and Gardiner for sharing their knowledge.

As for the future of GeForce NOW on Linux, I believe Nvidia will end up distributing this on Steam itself, thus making it available on Lenovo’s Legion Go S Powered by SteamOS, and all future SteamOS devices.