I’ve been living with the Steam Machine long enough now that the initial novelty has settled and I have a better sense of what it’s like to live with it. Everything I said in my initial review still stands: It’s a great casual plug-and-play machine, but the hardware doesn’t match the price. I’m still using it regularly with the obvious downsides, though, and that’s largely thanks to a mundane feature I didn’t expect to change my gaming habits: Steam Cloud saves.

That’s not a new feature that came with the Steam Machine. I’ve always had the ability to take my save data between my devices. I’m more conscious of how much of a lifesaver that feature is, though, now that I have a central Steam device that’s tied to my TV. The price may not be worth it, but I’m starting to embrace a Steam hardware ecosystem that gives me a level of flexibility my other consoles lack.

Steam Cloud is one of those features that’s easy to ignore if you only play your PC games in one place. It’s a digital backup system that syncs your saves to the cloud and lets you access them on other devices. If I play a game on my desktop, but decide........

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