The Steam Deck is launching soon, and with Valve’s promise that the device will deliver a full-fledged PC gaming experience, it certainly has a lot to live up to. Of course, given its OS and Proton compatibility software, there will be questions about whether certain games in the huge Steam library can run on the Steam Deck. Valve, however, is in the process of calculating that.
Valve has publishing the Steam Deck Compatibility program, which, as its name suggests, will see Valve test and review every game in the Steam library to see if they will run on the Steam Deck or not.
“While many games run great on Deck out of the box, this shift means that some games that aren’t, while great on a desktop computer, are a great experience on Steam Deck, ”Writes Valve. “We want it to be easy for you to find great gaming experiences on Steam Deck, so we’ve designed a system to do just that.”
Upon review, Valve will place each game into one of four categories – Authenticated (which suggests the game works perfectly well on the Steam Deck), Playable (the game is playable, but “requires some manual user tweet to play”), Unsupported (games not currently active on the device, such as Half Life: Alyx), and Unknown (games not yet tested).
For a game to be Verified, four boxes will need to be checked. As Valve explained, these are:
- Input: The title should have full controller support, use appropriate controller input icons, and automatically mount the on-screen keyboard when needed.
- Display: The game should support Steam Deck’s default resolution (1280 × 800 or 1280 × 720), have good default settings, and text should be legible.
- Seamless: The title should display no compatibility warnings, and if there is a launcher, it should be navigated with a controller.
- System Support: If running through Proton, the game and all of its middle wares should be supported by Proton. This includes anti-fraud support.
In the meantime, every game on the Steam Deck store and your personal library will provide you with information based on Valve’s tests of it.
“We have already started reviewing titles and will continue to check games through launch and beyond,” concludes Valve. “This is an ongoing evaluation of the entire catalog and game rating may change over time – titles will be revised as the developer releases updates or the Deck software improves.”
