Following the original Windows 10 drivers for the device, Valve announced Steam Deck added audio drivers for Windows.

Now that Steam Deck added audio drivers for Windows 10 and 11, any users wanting to throw Microsoft’s operating system onto the new handheld will have full audio support.

For those unfamiliar with how computer hardware functions, a driver is usually what tells the operating system how to utilize the attached or installed hardware.

Even though Steam Deck has had Windows 10 drivers nearly since its release, if you wiped it and threw Windows down you’d have no audio – until now. To be clear you would have needed these drivers for both the built-in speakers and the 3.5m headphone jack.

Since we got our Steam Deck and started evaluating it for our forthcoming review, I’ve been rocking Valve’s native SteamOS, which is Linux-based, the same operating system they manufacture and image the Steam Deck with. Perhaps now that Steam Deck added audio drivers for Windows I’ll see how it runs with that installed.

Lots of games that are not officially ported to Linux can run on the Steam Deck, thanks to Valve’s client-based wrapper that lets you essentially boot Windows-only games within the Linux-based SteamOS. They’ve also confirmed over 2000 games are already fully compatible with Steam Deck – find that list here.

Valve’s recently launched Steam Deck is now available, and in three flavors: $399 (64GB), $529 (256GB), and $649 (512GB), over on the Steam store.

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