The Ukrainian armed forces are reportedly using Steam Decks to remote-control gun turrets

Test footage of ShaBlya system shared by government-run website

Image credit: TPO Media / Rock Paper Shotgun

According to Ukrainian government-run website United24 Media, Ukraine’s armed forces are using Steam Decks to remote-control gun turrets in the course of the on-going war with Russia. The site has shared a video of a new turret system, ShaBlya, which was apparently developed by Ukrainian engineers and approved for mass production earlier this year.

As described in the video, the system is designed for use against infantry and lightly armoured targets. It’s not clear from the video how the system works in practice, but it looks like operators can view camera feeds from the turret and shoot at people and vehicles using the Steam Deck’s built-in controls. Having done a bit of digging of my own, Ukraine’s military appear to have been experimenting with the Steam Deck since April 2023. Valve have yet to acknowledge or comment on all this – I’ll let you know if they do.

The footage is a reminder that the games industry and the military sector are heavily enmeshed. The overlap isn’t just limited to military engineers hacking consumer devices – military technology and practices and video game development and production are entangled at many levels, in what has become a circular exchange of ideas and expertise. Game engine company Unity have taken on military contracts to work on battlefield simulations for training purposes. So have Bohemia Interactive, in addition to working on their own, fictitious yet “authentic” war simulations for consumer usage – their attention to detail has reached the point that people have successfully passed off videos of Bohemia games as real war footage. The US military has a long history of adapting video game controller technologies to work with drones, unmanned vehicles and submarines.

Video games developers have, of course, borrowed ample material from the military sector, from licensed guns in Call Of Duty through the fact that Helldivers 2 is grounded in its developers’ experience of military service to the many live service games that cast you as some kind of private military contractor. People Make Games recently published a comprehensive video on the subject which is worth sitting through.