Quick answer: MoonDeck's developer is ending the Decky plugin, which launches Steam games over Moonlight, saying Steam Remote Play has become too good. It leaves the Decky store at the end of October unless someone takes it over.
MoonDeck, the Decky Loader plugin for streaming Steam games to a Steam Deck through Moonlight, is coming to an end. Its developer announced on the r/SteamDeck subreddit on October 28 that development is stopping after nearly four years and ten months.
MoonDeck lets you play any of your Steam games through Moonlight without adding each one to Sunshine first, working a lot like Steam Remote Play or GeForce GameStream. It needs a small companion app, MoonDeck Buddy, running on the host PC.
The main reason for stopping, the developer says, is that Steam Remote Play "has simply become too good recently." They found they had been streaming over Wi-Fi instead of wired LAN without noticing, while thinking it was better than their own Moonlight setup. They only caught it when their router became a bottleneck at certain times of day. The developer pointed to an open SteamOS bug report, where SteamOS devices don't switch from Wi-Fi to Ethernet when a cable is plugged in, which includes a workaround. The conclusion: "I see no reason to use Moonlight anymore."
Anyone who wants to take over the project can reach the developer on Decky's Discord, in MoonDeck's support channel. Otherwise, removal of the plugin from the Decky store starts at the end of this month.
Valve has been busy with Remote Play in recent Steam betas. The October 22 beta reworked Remote Play HDR and turned HDR back on for the Steam Deck OLED, and the October 26 beta made streams to a local computer start faster.
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