Last year, Steam Deck modders discovered how with a little file modding you could swap out the generic intro video that plays when booting up the console with your own video. Now, in time for the Steam Deck’s one-year launch anniversary, Valve has released official boot-up videos and made it easier to customize what plays when turning on a Steam Deck.
On paper, Valve launched the Steam Deck on February 25, 2022. However, most people didn’t get one until months later, as early on the handheld PC was hard to buy due to limited supplies and high demand. That’s all over now. And a year later it’s not only easy to purchase a Steam Deck, but it’s clear that the device is here to stay, with tons of support from devs and publishers and loads of players around the world enjoying their Steam games everywhere and anywhere. Valve made the Steam Deck easy to modify and customize, and folks quickly figured out how to replace the basic boot-up video with sillier things. And now Valve—seemingly inspired by these homebrew creations—is offering up official new boot-up videos that players can buy with Steam points.
The announcement of official support for custom boot animations came as part of a larger post focused on the Steam Deck’s one-year anniversary and how far things have come for Valve’s portable PC.
So far Valve’s released 20 new custom boot videos, which can be purchased using Steam points. This is similar to how keyboard and profile themes currently work on Steam. Not only has Valve added its own official boot-up videos, but it has also made it easier than ever to select which videos will play when starting up the Deck. No more fiddling with folders and the Deck’s useful (but not super user-friendly) desktop mode. Even better, if you don’t like making choices, you can set it to random. And this new random option as well as the new boot video settings menu will work with existing custom intros you might have already modded into your Steam Deck.
So don’t worry folks, you can keep your weird Shrek memes and even add more and have them play randomly each time you start up the Deck. What a world we live in!
