Valve shared some welcome news about running SteamOS on devices beyond the Steam Deck or the officially licensed Legion Go S model.

SteamOS is slowly becoming an alternative to Windows for handheld gaming devices. After launching the Steam Deck with SteamOS, its own operating system,

SteamOS was always supposed to be bigger than Valve’s own Steam Deck, and 2025 is the year it finally expands. Not only will Lenovo ship the first third-party SteamOS handheld this May, Valve has now revealed it will let you install a working copy of SteamOS on other handhelds even sooner than that.

Lenovo Legion Go S pre-orders just went live at Best Buy, and you can now reserve the Windows 11 version for $729. There's no sign of the SteamOS model yet, which just so happens to the the handheld I'm most hyped for so far. However, if you'd rather embrace the versatility of Microsoft's PC operating system, this is the version for you.

The Lenovo Legion Go S with Windows or SteamOS also joins a prototype for the Lenovo Go 2, now with controllers you can comfortably hold.

Lenovo is trying an experiment. In May, it will officially become the very first company outside of Valve to ship a handheld gaming PC with the Steam Deck’s wonderfully pick-up-and-play SteamOS instead of Microsoft Windows. And at $499, it’ll be a true Steam Deck rival, joining it as one of the lower-priced PC handhelds you can buy.

The Steam Deck has been the biggest PC gaming hardware story of the last few years. So it’s no surprise that the idea of running SteamOS (perhaps the most celebrated component of that machine) on other handhelds like the Legion Go S is also a big deal.