As Valve finally unleashes its hotly-anticipated Steam Deck mobile PC, many have been wondering just how well it will run the games it says it will. Valve has been preparing its own games, updating the UI for Half-Life 2 and tweaking Portal 2 to make sure they're both suitable for the handheld device. Now, as the world waits with open arms, the aforementioned games have been given some last minute care in an effort to ensure that these popular IPs are Steam Deck-worthy.
In a couple of recent posts on their respective Steam pages, Valve has made some additional eleventh hour adjustments to these beloved sequels, with specific mentioning of things that have been updated for the purpose of the newly-arrived Steam Deck. For example, Half-Life 2 has had a fix which looks at support for "external controllers" for the handheld PC, as well as adding "chapter icons" for the UI. Not much is mentioned in terms of Portal 2, but it too has had an update for controller support, so it stands to reason that this relates to the Steam Deck as well.
With Steam users being able to check game compatibility, all hands have been on deck, as it were, to make sure that as many titles as possible would be verified and playable on the system. With around 50,000 games in total across its entire database, that is a lot of work in order to make sure players can play their favorites on the Steam Deck. However, the way things have been going, it seems as though getting the most popular and newer games ready has been a priority, which is understandable given how many thousands of games there are all together.
There was a lot of buzz around it when Valve first announced the Steam Deck last July. Originally touted as a Switch-like device, the more information that has come out about the Deck, the more it seems like it could be in a league of its own. With a Linux-based system, full compatibility with PC peripherals, and allegedly the option to factory reset it and install something like Windows, it seems less and less like a typical handheld games console.
Originally, Steam Deck was supposed to come out last December, but had to be delayed mainly due to the ongoing tech shortages. Given the extra two months, it seems that Valve, and its partners, have used the time wisely by tweaking the operating system, hardware, and making as many games as compatible as possible, especially Half-Life 2 and Portal 2.
The Steam Deck is due out today.