Valve dev responds to Steam Deck 2 rumors amid AMD announcement

Details regarding AMD’s brand-new Ryzen Z2 chips fueled rumors about Steam Deck 2 that a Valve developer quickly debunked.

Despite previously confirming plans to build a Steam Deck successor, Valve has not shared what consumers should expect in terms of hardware improvements.

In fact, it stands to reason that a proper follow-up won’t be ready for market for at least a few years. But a pre-recorded AMD presentation announcing its new Ryzen Z2 chips seemed to out the inner workings of a future Steam Deck device.

According to The Verge, the AMD briefing announced three new Ryzen Z2 chips built for handheld gaming PCs. The publication says journalists were told the Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, and the Steam Deck will all utilize the upcoming APUs.

Valve says a Z2-powered Steam Deck isn’t on the cards

Following a VideoCardz leak that landed before AMD’s official reveal, talk of a future Steam Deck running Ryzen Z2-series tech spread like wildfire. But it did not take long for a Valve developer to step in and correct the record.

In a post on his personal BlueSky account, Steam Deck developer Pierre-Loup Griffais stated the following, “There is and will be no Z2 Steam Deck.”

The post from Griffais further clarified that a circulating presentation slide suggesting otherwise was likely “meant to say the series is [intended] for products like that, not announcing anything specific.”

Valve

In spite of the public denial from a Valve developer, The Verge says AMD representatives would not plainly clear the record when pressed on the matter.

Representatives of the tech company merely told the publication that the aformentioned slide was meant to “highlight our current handheld design wins” and wasn’t intended to “preannounce any partner handheld devices.”

Either way, without official word on what Valve has planned, it’s too early to say what exactly the inner workings of the Steam Deck 2 will entail.