Valve has revealed that it is reviewing “the entire Steam catalogue” to identify Steam Deck compatibility levels for every game on the platform, though confirms that not all games will be playable on the console.
Yesterday (October 18), Valve shared news on how the company will assign “Deck Verified” status to games. Being “Deck Verified” means passing four tests: input, seamlessness, display and system support.
On the review process, Valve said the following:
“We’ve already started reviewing titles and will continue to check games through launch and beyond. This is an ongoing evaluation of the entire catalogue and a game’s rating can change over time – titles will be re-reviewed as the developer releases updates or the Deck’s software improves.”
Based on that set of criteria, Steam Deck games will be assigned four labels – Verified, Playable, Unsupported and Unknown. Verified games “work great on Steam Deck, right out of the box”, while Playable games “may require some manual tweaking by the user” to get right.
The Unsupported label means that the game will not be functional on the console, while an Unknown tag means it hasn’t yet been reviewed for compatibility. The existence of the Unsupported tag – which is listed with Half-Life: Alyx as an example – confirms that not all games will be available to play on the Steam Deck.
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The Steam storefront – when accessed on Steam Deck consoles – will prioritise showcasing Deck Verified games, though all other games will still be visible in another tab.
Back in September, Proton president James Ramey reiterated that the console was unlikely to run every single game on Steam.
In other news, an invincibility bug in New World is causing chaos in player versus player modes, though Amazon Game Studios is “aware and investigating” the problem.