By now, most gamers are probably aware of the Valve hand-held system Steam Deck, which is fast becoming a much-talked about device. With recent word that the Steam Deck will fully support all mods, similar to a regular home computer, it's starting to sound like it's going to be an all-round incredible gaming system for those who prefer PC games. However, there is one issue with it which may need addressing before it's released.
Recently, it has come to some people's attention that not all games will be able to run on the system. According to the report, the Steam Deck may not be compatible with a number of popular online multiplayer games. That's not to say it won't play the majority of other titles. As it's essentially a hand-held PC, it functions in the same way as a regular one, which means pretty much all games in a user's Steam library will work. However, it's just these few which may cause problems.
Games such as Dead by Daylight, Destiny 2, PUBG and possibly more, all of which are online games, may not run on the Steam Deck out of the box, or will at least run, but players won't be able to start a match. The reason for this is the device runs on a Linux-based system. Valve have attempted to combat this with a feature called Proton. It works in a similar way to Wine, which enables compatibility between Linux systems and Windows executable files, including games.
While this sounds like it should make the aforementioned multiplayer games work on Valve's device, where it falls down is through the anti-cheat system which games like PUBG and others use these days. This means there are currently issues between the anti-cheat system and the Steam Deck. Essentially, it seems that the games should technically run, but that anti-cheat feature won't, which means players won't actually be able to play the game the way they're supposed to be played, i.e. online.
While Valve says it is working to improve Proton and the Steam OS, the company hasn't said exactly how it's going to be tackling this problem, but they do have a few months to fix it. It's entirely possible that it could be solved before it's released. With this new issue and with word that the lower spec model of the Steam Deck will have a slower hard-drive, the cracks are starting to show in what is otherwise being considered an exciting piece of hardware.
The Steam Deck will launch in December 2021.
Source: PC Gamer