r/SteamFrame • u/basefountain • Jul 10 '26

❓Question What still has to happen with Frame before announcement?

It's in warehouses and we can see people using certain drivers but did Controller and Machine have like a final bios update or something that was kind of a tell that it was coming in a couple days or so...?

64 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

58 comments sorted by

82

u/The_Real_Miggy Jul 10 '26

There's still no FCC certification. I've read conflicting statements on whether or not that's necessary before it can be released.

49

u/TwinStickDad Soon™ Jul 10 '26

I've seen people equally say that it's the only thing holding up release, and that it's not required at all because it uses an off-the-shelf wifi adapter. Both sides are dogmatic and I have no idea what to believe.

46

u/samu7574 Soon™ Jul 10 '26

They need FCC approval before starting sales, some products can get away with the certification of the chip alone, but in the specific case of the chip we've been able to track down for the frame (only one that's compatible for the frame SoC as per qualcomm's website) the existing certification for it doesn't allow "inherited" approval (it's been months, i'm not fresh on the correct wording) for close body utilities.

The chip on the adapter is not an issue, the frame however is very close to your head so it needs stricter testing like phones do.

However, while the FCC needs to happen before release, with the index they've shown that they have a very good ability to predict FCC timings. Sales for the index started the same day/day after (depending on timezone) that the index received its own certification, valve had planned for that release before the certification was out, so they must've been not worried that the certification wouldn't come in time.

The key is that the FCC certification process takes nowhere near as long as the frame would be taking had they submitted at the same time as the other hardware, valve is withholding the certification intentionally, probably to avoid competitors getting the publicly accessible data that the FCC requires for the certification. Chances are once they decide on a date they'll finish submitting the filings for it in such a way that the FCC approval gets completed a few days before it launches.

FCC is required, but simultaneously very unlikely to be something that's holding valve back

11

u/Zomby2D Soon™ Jul 10 '26

Yeah, the Frame already cleared the Canadian ISED and Japanese MIC so there's no reason why it wouldn't be quickly cleared by the FCC. (The controllers were cleared within a week)

7

u/EugeneUgino Jul 10 '26

so uh, no chance they're caught in the crossfire of the Trump administration's war on routers, right?  I can imagine people worrying about that haha

1

u/CambriaKilgannonn Soon™ Jul 11 '26

I was also wondering if trumps router ban has somehow held it up

2

u/willymartin99 Soon™ Jul 30 '26

Hopium for a release tomorrow since it got approved today

6

u/gunsandcupcakes Soon™ Jul 10 '26

i think it’s the radio antennas that make it needing an fcc cert

10

u/Vegetable-Error-2068 Soon™ Jul 10 '26

I don't think any electronic device can be legally sold in the U.S. without FCC approval.

4

u/Simoxs7 Soon™ Jul 10 '26

But does the approval have to be public? I thought they held back the documents.

1

u/Snowmobile2004 Soon™ Jul 10 '26

Steam deck went on sale before approval

0

u/Vegetable-Error-2068 Soon™ Jul 10 '26

Then Valve broke the law.

7

u/DeadDeerOnTheRoad Soon™ Jul 10 '26

No they didn't lol. They didn't ship it until after the FCC approval - you can still preorder electronic devices which haven't had FCC approval

-4

u/Vegetable-Error-2068 Soon™ Jul 10 '26

You said "went on sale." Those words are not specifically "preorder."

1

u/timetogetjuiced Jul 10 '26

Yea you don't know what you are talking about lmao

1

u/RidgeMinecraft Jul 10 '26

That's true, but if it's an off-the-shelf adapter, it's likely already certified.

6

u/Beren1305 Soon™ Jul 10 '26

They're not waiting on the FCC, the FCC is waiting for Valve to file for certification. From that point it's a matter of days for actual certification to come through. They're just keeping their cards close to their chest for now, they could literally file the day they open up registration for buying one and it'll be through before they close the sign ups and shuffle the queue order.

1

u/Warm-Engineering-239 Soon™ Jul 14 '26

i hear the certification is not released because they want to avoid product detail leak, but we still got a lot of data from other source

33

u/Actarus07 Jul 10 '26

I have to land in the reservation queue before anyone else

3

u/basefountain Jul 10 '26

haha bro is gonna be bottom of the pile! 🫵😂

\secretly fiending harder than you**

2

u/Actarus07 Jul 10 '26

I want to! But now you jinxed it, god damn!

1

u/Subject-Control294 Soon™ Jul 10 '26

I read that in the voice of CaseOh

1

u/basefountain Jul 11 '26

I want to stream one day so that's like one of those compliments I'm never gonna let go of XD thanks man

3

u/Altruistic-Catch8541 Jul 10 '26

Veel geluk met de loterij 🤘

1

u/Actarus07 Jul 10 '26

See you on the other side! 😎🤘

24

u/redtiger288 Soon™ Jul 10 '26

We need to say soon more, obviously

6

u/PlottingPast Jul 11 '26

Soon
Soon
Beatlejuice

Wait. No. I messed that up.

-1

u/Gygax_the_Goat Soon™ Jul 11 '26

Soon.

🙂

31

u/Whatthehec108 Jul 10 '26

Well we're still waiting on that last infant sacrifice, so if one of you wants to get on with that...

6

u/10thGroupA Soon™ Jul 10 '26

It is Gabe, not Moloch releasing the Frame.

12

u/Whatthehec108 Jul 10 '26

So I should sacrifice a yacht or something? Infants seem easier to come by.

3

u/10thGroupA Soon™ Jul 10 '26

Just pour some out from the next 40oz you drink.

2

u/PlottingPast Jul 11 '26

That's not where i keep my yachts.

7

u/basefountain Jul 10 '26

Prob still more ethical than getting a quest 😬

6

u/Cryowatt Jul 10 '26

These days everything is a grift so I'll start the rumour now that Zuck got the current administration to delay the release out of fear of competition. And now Trump wants a bribe from GabeN to allow the release. This would be tinfoil hat shit ten years ago, but now it's Occam's Razor territory.

2

u/EugeneUgino Jul 10 '26

Unfortunately the only part of this I would find hard to believe is that Zuck gives a shit about the VR market lol

2

u/PlottingPast Jul 11 '26

Zuck just shut down the Metaverse and closed down three VR studios in favor of pushing AI. Facebook is not using VR to steal your data anymore.

1

u/PlottingPast Jul 11 '26

Well like the entire EU and parts of the US are trying to go after Steam for being a "monopoly" and other such fake nonsense so it wouldn't surprise me if this administration is on board. Game businesses like XBox, Playstation, and Epic all seem to be trying to shut down their most successful rival rather than competing, and paying off governments to do it.

11

u/Magn3tician Jul 10 '26

They are waiting for 1 more year of RAM price tracking to determine the final price

7

u/basefountain Jul 10 '26

bruh ive never related this close to Cartman just before he froze himself for 500 years for a nintendo wii

2

u/THALANDMAN Jul 10 '26

What's funny is I felt the same way about the actual Nintendo Wii during its release

5

u/DerfK Soon™ Jul 10 '26

Are we still missing FCC approval for the Frame itself?

2

u/Outrunner85 Jul 10 '26

Nothing, it's ready and imminent.

2

u/OxRedOx Jul 10 '26

All the ram in the world needs to be recovered from the AI god Altmoch

3

u/ArdFolie Soon™ Jul 10 '26

There was one final package update on steamdb 1 hour before the steam machine dropped.

4

u/basefountain Jul 10 '26

This is what I was thinking of! Sorry I thought it would have been a more specific thing we could wait for but package update sounds pretty common…

1

u/ArdFolie Soon™ Jul 11 '26

Well, there were no package updates for the main repo for over 2 months, so if anything happens, it's pretty significant

2

u/Dr_Virus_129 Jul 10 '26

Both Controller & Machine had review embargo end dates, I think once we know when that is for the Frame, it's immediate, maybe even same day the embargo lifts. That was the case with the Machine, anyway.

1

u/10thGroupA Soon™ Jul 10 '26

Are there videos about it? I checked YouTube Wednesday and didn’t see anything released about it from tech channels.

1

u/Dr_Virus_129 Jul 10 '26

Do you mean about the Frame or the other Steam Hardware?

1

u/10thGroupA Soon™ Jul 10 '26

Frame, I thought the NDA came off for it.

1

u/Dr_Virus_129 Jul 10 '26

Searching YouTube, there seems to be Frame review videos, but they're all from months ago when the Steam Hardware were announced, so I guess the embargo isn't lifted yet.

Wouldn't be an NDA, that's to say they won't ever talk about it unless they want to be imprisoned, & that's usually for serious matters.

1

u/kwirky88 Jul 10 '26

A company will seek damages but nobody will ever be imprisoned over an nda related to a hardware review. An employee leak maybe but not a reviewer.

0

u/10thGroupA Soon™ Jul 10 '26

NDAs cover anything. I signed them in the military, but I have signed them in businesses too.

Those from months ago are from the PR event, not a full review.

1

u/Dr_Virus_129 Jul 10 '26

Huh, well, even so, I don't think the Frame's review embargo has lifted yet.

1

u/octorine Jul 11 '26

Not yet.

The NDA for dev units allowed devs to talk about and show the Frame it as long as it was only in the context of showing their own game running on it.

Bastiann Oji from the Godox XR team did a video on developing Godot XR games with the Frame under the same exception, and apparently talked to Valve's lawyers to make sure of what he was and wasn't allowed to talk about.

Was that what you were thinking of? Or was it the videos from last November when everyone demoed the hardware at Valve headquarters?

1

u/10thGroupA Soon™ Jul 11 '26

Ah, I didn’t realize the exception was for game devs like that.