By now, any serious gamer is familiar with a favorite title becoming unplayable after a centralized online server gets shut down, or being unable to purchase and download a digitally delisted, critically acclaimed title from yesteryear. Can anything be done about this video game preservation problem?

To help answer that question, we'll be hosting a live conversation with Ross Scott, the founder of the Stop Killing Games campaign, on August 11 at 2:30 pm ET as part of the Ars Live series. As Ars' Senior Gaming Editor, I've documented countless examples of once vibrant games being left for dead by their creators.

You can watch the discussion live on YouTube when the time comes.

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SteamOS is continuing its slow march to fuller support on a wider variety of non-Valve hardware. This weekend's release of the SteamOS 3.8.25 Beta includes "initial gamepad support" for a few recent gaming handhelds and improved support for a few others.

Those newly supported handhelds include MSI's Claw 8 EX AI+, the extremely expensive, extremely powerful handheld built around Intel's Arc G3 processor that launched this summer. While SteamOS has long included beta support for "other AMD powered handhelds," Valve has only recently been working on offering compatibility with Intel-based handhelds like the MSI Claw line. This weekend's update suggests the company hasn't abandoned those efforts and that Intel chips aren't being left out of the SteamOS conversation.

SteamOS 3.8.25 also newly supports the controllers built into Ayaneo's Android-focused Pocket S2 and the more recently released Windows-based Konkr Fit. Valve also says the new OS offers "improved support" for older MSI Claw devices and the OneXPlayer line of portable gaming PCs.

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