I have been bragging about this a lot recently, but as of late I have been able to get myself a Steam Deck without spending a real penny. The way I did this was very interesting, and a bit of a bonus to my original plans. I am also gonna give my honest review of the… computer? console? If we consider a Nintendo Switch to be a console, I don’t see how we can’t refer to a Steam Deck as a console.

“So as for the “how”, here it is. CS:GO cases are seriously an investment. I think it’s kind of an open secret now due to CS2 raising the prices to new heights for most of the game’s digital items. If you are able to get CS:GO cases for a low price (these are commodity items, so you buy them in bulk), sit on them for a few years. Eventually, they’ll go up in price. The rarity and scarcity of “Rare” cases (cases that no longer drop) pretty much guarantees this. The gamblers and high profile streamers of the world have as much money as they want to actually buy these cases, so you’re guaranteed to sell them off at a higher price at some point. This does take some patience, but if you really hold onto your stuff, you can make a lot of money on Steam…

So if you make all of this money, obviously you might want some way to convert it. Yeah, you might put the Steam Wallet funds back into CS:GO skins (at the end of my initial investment, I had over $900 in my Steam Wallet) but you can also put it into hardware on Steam. You take a major hit due to shipping and the 15% Gabe Tax from your sales, but it is totally possible to get enough Steam Wallet money to buy Steam Decks and sell them off on Facebook Marketplace. There may be some other ways you can make some actual cash, like buying games for people, but Steam Decks allow you to sell hundreds of dollars in one shot with not too much in the way of losing out on a ton.

To track my case portfolio, I made a python script that allows me to price check individual cases as well as my entire portfolio. Here’s an example of it running. I don’t have a GUI for it, I want to make one eventually (not even sure if Python does GUIs, but I can rewrite this in another language).

Here’s part of the code that actually checks the market. Valve very helpfully set up a .json file that you can pull from any market entry that has information on the current lowest price of the item.

With this tool, I can check the prices each step of the way and when something happens like a new collection releasing or if someone decides to sell their cases a lot cheaper than they actually go for. I could even rewrite this to check the .json every few seconds to see when a lower than average price is listed for buying low if I wanted to.

I won’t lie… I have been bragging about this to a lot of people. I mean, who wouldn’t? It took roughly 200 cases but these are cases I just had over the years and didn’t even buy with Steam funds or actual money. I decided to get the highest model Deck because I thought it would be funny to splurge with my newly acquired spending money. There’s not a whole lot of benefit compared to the other models, just bells and whistles like a bigger SSD and a better screen. It also came in a really good carrying case.

So far I have had a good time with it. With my remaining funds, I bought a couple of games that would be great on the Switch but the Switch can’t run them. One of my favorite games that I have gotten recently is GRIP: Combat Racing. It’s a game very similar to Rollcage in that you have these vehicles with wheels that can stick to surfaces. It’s not exactly a traditional anti-gravity racing game because traditionally those involve actual anti-gravity vehicles that float off the ground (although there are are some of those in the game) and the weapons seem overbearing, but that’s part of having an identity. Overall, I’m really enjoying it. There’s customization for your own vehicle and I always enjoy that in games. It runs really well on the Deck and is a perfect fit to the controls. It feels great to play.

DOOM 2016 is something that I have always wanted to play. I don’t normally care for graphics in games, but DOOM 2016 on the Switch was held back by the hardware and everything looked downright bad and it was in 30 FPS to boot. On the Deck, it runs fairly well and mostly with 60 FPS ‘out of the box’ with no other changes. I did however turn the gyro controls off. I don’t know when this trend started but gyro controls really suck when you have to move the entire screen and device for it to work. It really doesn’t feel good.

Steam backlogs are daunting. There are so many games that people just sort of conglomerate and I think that the Deck really works well for these. There are so many games that I can play now that I’m not hunched over in the same position that I am in when I am working. Braid, BallisticNG, Fight’N’Rage… there’s a ton more.

Overall, I am very glad that I am enjoying this console/computer. I would recommend them to anyone who can get them at a reduced price. If you have a good chair and computer however, I don’t think keyboard and mouse can be beat for many games.