Valve has reportedly enabled optical drive support in the Linux kernel of the Steam Frame. The change came just one day after a user asked for it on the Steam Community forums.
To be clear, the Steam Frame isn’t getting a built-in disc tray. This is about plugging in an external drive.
The user wanted to bring movies and old games on disc while traveling. Their plan didn’t go well. In their words: “Turns out that the Frame cannot power the player and even if it could it lacks the drivers to read a disc.”
Their example game was Need for Speed: Carbon. The user says they own it on disc and that EA no longer sells it.
It isn’t plug-and-play yet
A kernel change is only the first step. There’s no build number, release channel, or release date. A change in the source code isn’t the same as an update on your headset.
Power is also still a problem. A driver can’t make a USB port deliver more power. Drives that come with their own power supply, or a powered USB hub, might solve this. Nobody has shown that working yet.
Watching a movie needs more than a detected drive. Users say the Steam Frame has a full KDE desktop like the Steam Deck. In that case, apps like VLC could play discs. But commercial DVDs and Blu-rays often use copy protection, and that can block playback.
Old PC games are even harder. The Steam Frame runs SteamOS on an ARM-based Snapdragon chip. A 2006 Windows installer has to get through Proton and an x86 translation layer. Old copy protection can cause more trouble. So nobody has confirmed that Need for Speed: Carbon now installs on the headset.
