That is my understanding. Additionally I have seen no evidence that it is actually enforced either. You could get Ghost of Tsushima for $59.99 on steam and for like $51.xx on another site using keys. Same happened with forbidden west.
Most of the handheld benchmarks have been 3% or 4% higher compared to the Steamdeck at 15 watts, which often is a 1 to 4 FPS difference. This would explain why Valve isn’t in a hurry for a Steamdeck 2. If you plan of playing on battery, then that is what you’ll probably running around that if you plan on playing a while. The main advantage of these newer chips is when used plugged in.
CP2077 had a bunch of issues on release as well. Much better now. I feel like they(developers) need to bring in different testers near release. If you have the same testers whom have been testing builds for years it can probably be hard to see the issues with the same clarity.
Also stop having release dates. Just use vague terms like 2nd half 2024. When you get the release build, anounce a date, like a month later, give your devs a couple weeks off as there will be missed bugs after release. Hard release dates aren’t helping these situations.