New Steam hardware leaks ahead of official announcement – the return of an old fave, refreshed

Valve is reportedly set to unveil at least two new Steam gaming devices in the next day or two. One of them had leaked online already.

We're not expecting the long-rumoured, long-awaited replacement for the Steam Deck, but we should still be getting gen 2 versions of a couple of other old favourites.

Rumours have it that Valve is about to unleash a new VR headset – the Steam Frame. It is said to be a standalone model – ie. won't need a PC – and rival the Meta Quest 3. However, it'll give you access to Steam (of course) and the vast amount of VR games that are available through the platform.

But a more definitive leak comes from Brad Lynch (@SadlyItsBradley) who has a decent track record of such things. He claims that the headset will be accompanied by a new Steam Controller.

Posting on his X feed, with an image he admittedly created using AI "trained on a real image of the new controller", he reveals that the new gamepad will have two thumbsticks rather than the one on Valve's infamous original.

The touchpanels, for mouse-like control, will this time be at the bottom rather than top.

According to his post, the controller will also be able to detect how far your hands are from the grips, although there won't be individual finger tracking. This could be important for VR games.

In terms of the official launch time/day, we've heard it could be as soon as today – Wednesday, 12 November 2025. So we'll be keeping our ears to the ground in case there are further rumblings.

If so, we'll bring you more as soon as we have it. And there are even rumours that Valve could follow soon with a Half-Life 3 announcement, so we'll try to keep on top of that too.

It could be an exciting 24 to 48 hours for Valve and Steam hardware fans, that's for sure.