Could the Steam Deck Save Fighting Games?
PC is the dream platform for fighting games, but a nightmare for fighting game tournaments. This unfortunate fact regained relevance in early July of 2021, when the fighting game community (or “FGC”) discovered that the PlayStation 4 version of Guilty Gear -Strive- had approximately four additional frames of input delay compared to PC. To outsiders, having to wait an extra fifteenth of a second may seem trivial, but in a genre as fast-paced and precise as fighting games, even the smallest amount of input delay can hamper each player’s ability to react quickly or perform tight combos. This spurred William “Leffen” Hjelte, the top Guilty Gear -Strive- player in Europe, to start a Twitter thread in which he called for fighting game tournaments to adopt PC as their standard platform, stating “PS4 Strive lags horribly...I can only imagine future fighting games are going to be similarly worse on older consoles.”
Professional Guilty Gear -Strive- player William “Leffen” Hjelte tweets his issues with playing fighting games on PlayStation.
However, as seasoned tournament organizers were quick to point out, PCs present numerous challenges for the fighting game scene. The first issue is controllers: Windows-based PCs have historically had significant issues with connecting and disconnecting different input devices, which slows tournament proceedings to a halt. While this is a problem for every genre, it is worsened by the fact that fighting game fans employ a wide variety of different input devices, including (but not limited to) standard Xbox and PlayStation controllers, custom-made arcade sticks, keyboards, and even steering wheels.
The controller problem becomes even worse when two players want to utilize the same type of controller on the same PC, because Windows cannot always differentiate the inputs between each player. FGC tournament organizer Shiburizu points this out in his piece “No, PC will not be the tournament standard for fighting game events,” bringing up a highly unfortunate example of this issue (shown below): “In this scene two high level Melty Blood AACC players (a game with the latest revision exclusively on PC) are using LAN to play their pools match through online play because both players use keyboard with the exact same control bindings and the PC has no way to differentiate it. This is still an issue with Windows in 2021.”
Two Melty Blood players resort to LAN due to Windows’ controller recognition issues. Image from Shiburizu’s article “No, PC, will not be the tournament standard for fighting game events.”
While playing online via LAN is considered tournament standard for other competitive game genres like shooters, it is not suitable for fighting games for a variety of reasons. First, many popular fighting games, such as Tekken 7 and Street Fighter V, have unstable netcode that adds varying amounts of delay to each player’s actions, negating the initial benefit of playing on PC. Secondly, while a game console can support two players at the same time, LAN tournaments require a separate PC for each individual player, which is much harder on a tournament organizer’s budget. This is exacerbated by the fact that most modern fighting games are very graphically intensive, and with the ongoing GPU shortages caused by cryptocurrency miners, the cost of setting up a suitable PC fighting game tournament becomes much higher than their console equivalents. Thirdly, playing side by side on the same machine has been baked into the culture of fighting games ever since the genre was born at arcades. Even if PC LAN tournaments were made feasible, they would fail to capture the kind of personal tournament experience that the FGC treasures.
Then, on July 15th, just a few days after all of these issues were discussed, Valve revealed the Steam Deck, a portable device that claimed to possess the power required to run high-end PC games. While the prospect of a handheld gaming PC is enticing enough on its own, Valve included promotional images that highlighted the platform’s use for fighting games. As pictured below, two players are playing Guilty Gear -Strive-, seemingly at max graphical settings, with each of their arcade sticks plugged into the same Steam Deck. This image cannot help but seem like Valve’s answer to the recent PC tournament discourse, explicitly showing that their product solves the issue of controller integration. Not only that, but the portability of the Steam Deck would make it far easier for tournament organizers to bring multiple consoles to the same venue. If the TOs are especially low on space and/or cash, they could display the game on the Steam Deck’s built-in screen, rather than having to buy an additional TV or external monitor like they would with a PlayStation.
One of Valve’s promotional images for the Steam Deck, showing off its ability to accept input from multiple custom fight sticks. Image from fightersgeneration.com.
Beyond solving the input delay issue, however, the Steam Deck also has the potential to revolutionize the fighting game genre as a whole. Firstly, the additional opportunities that the Steam Deck could present to tournament organizers would allow more local, grassroots tournament scenes to sprout up, which would increase the popularity of the genre and build the sense of community that helps the FGC thrive. Secondly, if the Steam Deck becomes the go-to console for fighting games, then this could greatly lower the barrier to entry for independent fighting game developers. Most indie developers create games for the PC, because producing digital products is much, much cheaper than shipping out physical copies, and digital storefronts like Steam generally have less strict guidelines for publishing. As PlayStation is still the dominant platform for the FGC, any indie fighting game that is PC-only will struggle to gain relevance, but the Steam Deck has the potential to change that.
Of course, much of this is hopeful speculation, as the Steam Deck has not been released to the public as of this writing. Additionally, the Steam Deck’s cheapest model still has a $399 price point, which could potentially undermine attempts to utilize it for grassroots tournament scenes. For now, the FGC will simply have to wait, but if all goes well, this could be a new dawn for fighting games, for both players and developers alike.