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Steam Link
What a rollercoaster ride of emotion.
Way back in the day, I purchased a physical Steam Link. This was a little black rectangle that allowed you to stream Steam from your PC to your TV. The purchase was made after I attended a few game nights with friends, and the hilarity that ensued from the Jackbox games. The setup over there was a laptop plugged into the TV; having no laptop myself, this seemed like a good workaround. I promptly never actually used it and Valve stopped making them.
Cue last week when I discovered that there’s a Steam Link App on the Google Play store. It pretty much does exactly what it sounds like: stream any Steam game from your PC to your phone. You may be wondering who in the world that sort of thing is for. Me. It’s for me. Or anyone stuck watching their progeny running around in quarantine while pretending to be working from home. Can’t use the physical Steam Link because that means the little guy can see a screen, and apparently kids are ruined forever if they witness more than 30 minutes of pixels a day.
If you have been following this blog for any length of time though, you know that I never do things the easy way.
The app is fine but you need a controller. Your options for native support are a Steam controller (discontinued), PS4/Xbone controllers (don’t have either console), or some nVidia garbage that is literally $200. When I looked at PS4/Xbone controllers, they started at $65 and went up from there. That’s… normal? Jesus. Actual prices during this pandemic are much higher, especially on Amazon.
So I decided to purchase just a generic bluetooth Android controller. The $35 kind that expands outward and turns your phone into a Switch-like device. While the controller “worked,” it was not recognized by Steam Link. So you have to download their China app – it’s always fun scrolling through items on Amazon and see “competitors” all say you need use the same app – which basically throws an overlay over your screen to make touch controls work with the controller. That got the job done… aside from the fact that you have to look at your touch controls all the time. Yuck.
So here I am now, returning the junk, and looking to see if spending $65 + $10 (for phone mount) is worth being able to play Fell Seal in the living room on my phone. Do I have other options?
I did look into Moonlight, which is another app that interfaces with your nVidia graphics card for streaming purposes. After spending an hour of the precious, “I could actually be playing videogames on my computer” time, I abandoned the effort when it didn’t work even after a driver update.
Currently, I am in a holding pattern. I do already have a PS3 controller (for the PS3 I never play) and an Xbox 360 controller I bought specifically for PC games that necessitate it. I have heard some people have success with simply pairing the Xbox controller to their PC (instead of the phone), and then basically bringing the controller and phone to the living room, assuming a decent bluetooth signal. Or maybe I will try getting one of those 8bitendo controllers that might be recognized by Steam Link. Or maybe I’ll just break down and spend an extra $30+ for a legit controller that will have no other use than however long this situation persists.
Or maybe I will just get by like I have up to this point, subsisting mainly on Reddit and playing with my child.
It’s a rough life, I know.
In An Age 
Sorta Black Friday, 2025 Edition
Dec 1
Posted by Azuriel
I started writing a list of games I had an eye on at the start of the holidays, and it has since passed me by with nary a thing purchased. At least, not from this list. Regardless, here it is for posterity:
On reflection, it’s pretty much just a list of every mainstream game released in the last 5 years. My actual wishlist is longer, but I sometimes forget that Steam doesn’t consider Black Friday to be a real holiday – most everything was not on sale, as it would normally be during the Winter Sale, for example.
What I did end up ordering this “holiday” season were technically two more Switch accessories. First was the 8Bitdo Lite 2 controller ($21), as a smaller controller for the Little Man. The normal Switch joy-cons sorta work for his hands already – using just one when playing Mario Kart 8, for example – but honestly I don’t like them all that much. If I want him to get more coordinated and better at videogames, getting used to a somewhat more “real” controller makes more sense. Plus, worst-case scenario, the controller itself works on Android devices.
The second item is the GameSir G8 Plus ($49 AliExpress), which is a telescoping bluetooth controller. While it can work with phones and even smaller tablets, the primary use-case is the Switch itself. There was a cheaper, Switch-specific option available, but again, I’m all about accounting for worst-case scenarios. To date, I have not played the Switch outside of Little Man co-op sessions in the living room, which means no Breath of the Wild (etc). If I’m being honest, I do not anticipate this purchase immediately solving that issue, but at least it eases some of the (future) potential friction.
Aside from all that, I am just continuing to quietly play Guild Wars 2 and Outer Worlds 2. Once the latter is finished, my plan is to move onto the last (hopefully) 10% of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, so as to free up 154 GB of space. After that… who knows. Baldur’s Gate 3 is right there. Death Stranding, too. Red Dead Redemption 2 as well. Or, you know, all of those Switch games I was talking about earlier.
Oh, or maybe Expedition 33! It is on Game Pass already…
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Tags: Black Friday, Consumers, Controller, Sales, Switch