Valve is looking to expand its footprint in the gaming world with the Steam Deck, a portable gaming device that lets players take their Steam library with them wherever they go. The Steam Deck has a lot of obstacles to overcome, including a global semiconductor chip shortage and the general heat and battery problems that come with trying to cram the processing power of a PC into a portable device. Nevertheless, since the Steam Deck has been on sale, gamers have been pre-ordering them in droves, and the first batches are expected to ship out in February.
In anticipation of the imminent release of the Steam Deck, a handful of games received a “Deck Verified” status, which lets players know whether a game will run well on the Steam Deck or not. Although only a few games have been rated so far, it seems as though the portable device will be capable of handling most fan favorites comfortably.
Reasonable Doubt About The Steam Deck
When the Deck was announced, gamers were excited at the prospect of being able to put their Steam library in their pockets. However, naturally, there were some concerns. Most notably, gamers wanted to know what could run on the system and at what quality. A device too weak to play most modern games would be useless to many gamers, although there are reasonable expectations that must be put in place, considering the size of the Deck.
Fortunately, the Deck is a device with some beefy specs. When connected to an external monitor, it is capable of outputting 8k resolution at 60Hz or 4k resolution at 120Hz, and when players want to go portable, they can enjoy their games on a sleek 7-inch LED touchscreen. Reports from developers have also been positive, and many have claimed that minimal to no optimization has to be done for their games to run on the Deck.
The Steam Deck Is Off To A Good Start
To ensure that gamers are aware of which games in the Steam catalog run on the Deck, Valve has undertaken the mammoth task of testing and verifying the games. Games are sorted into one of four categories: Verified, Playable, Unsupported, and Unknown. For a game to be considered Verified it must have full controller support, should support the default resolution of the Deck (1280x800 or 1280x720), have legible text, not display compatibility warnings, and if running through Proton, "the game and all its middleware should be supported by Proton," including anti-cheat support.
In addition to letting players know the status of games, Deck Verified also includes details of any issues. For example, Subnautica is rated as Playable and the details note that one of the problems is that “some functionality is not accessible when using the default controller configuration”. For gamers looking to access only the best games for their Decks, the Steam store on the device will feature a "Great on Deck" section which will house only Verified games.
The few games that have been tested reveal that the Deck will do just fine dealing with many modern games. Games that get the Verified rating include titles such as Sekiro, Psychonauts 2, Death Stranding, Cuphead, Dark Souls 3, Dark Souls 3, and Nier Automata. Games that are Playable, meaning that they work for the most part but may have minor issues, include Slay the Spire, Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Witcher 3, and RimWorld. Disappointingly, Persona 4 Golden falls in the Unsupported pile.
It should be noted that a game marked as Unsupported does not spell the end for its life on the Deck, as developers can always go back to make games compatible on the platform. Nevertheless, although only a small percentage of games have been tested so far, it paints a good picture of the range of games that the Steam Deck can support. Gamers can expect to play graphics-intense games like Death Stranding and Tomb Raider without too many problems. If tests keep churning out Verified results, the Deck may very well be the first portable PC gaming device to truly go mainstream.
The Steam Deck is expected to launch in February 2022.