I don't know if Valve was aware of what it was going to cause. throwing to the market Steam deckThere were already devices with similar concepts, but the popularity of the proposal from the man behind the most important PC games store made him win the game. Soon there were others who jumped on the bandwagon, and the rest is history lived and yet to be lived.
The Steam Deck, although sold as a console, is a miniature PC shaped like a portable console. The operating system it uses is SteamOS, now based on Arch — it was previously based on Debian — and that can be a problem. To run most games it relies on Proton, the secret weapon that allows it to launch games that are originally designed for Windows. So, how can I tell if a game is compatible with the Steam Deck?
Steam Deck verified, playable and unsupported games
One way, which I wouldn't say is the best, to find out if a game is compatible with the Steam Deck is to go to the page for the title in question and scroll down. At the time of publishing this article, in a column on the right we find “Steam Deck Compatibility”, as we see in the following capture.
We can find 4 different brands:
- VerifiedIf it's green, that game is fine to play on the Steam Deck without any modifications. It may have special settings when installed on a Deck, but it will work without doing anything manually. By the way, there have been cases of verified games that haven't performed the best, which is partly why I said this might not be the best way to tell if a game is supported or not.
- playableIn yellow we will see the titles that can be played, but there is something that is not perfect. For example, if a game requires using the touch screen to enter text or using the magnifying glass to see something properly, it will be playable, but the experience will not be the best.
- Not compatibleGames that cannot be played will be marked as “Not Compatible”… based on Valve’s testing, as we’ll explain later.
- Unknown. This is usually seen in older titles where they haven't tested and don't have much, if any, information.
Be careful with this
It seems to me VERY IMPORTANT Note that this about the previous symbols and brands may not be the most reliableFor example, there are games that have poor performance and are not verified, which clearly has to do with marketing. There are others that are not compatible, but can be made to work. How? By tweaking. What? Whatever the community says.
ProtonDB: your best ally to know the truth
Better than the previous brands is to go to a community maintained service, by name ProtonDBThere we can find out what people who have tried it say, and in many cases they share configurations to make an unsupported title work on our little ones.
For example, if we search for Horizon Forbidden West in ProtonDB (link), we'll see that Proton support is GOLD (PLATINUM is the best, GOLD the second), but the Deck icon is listed as unsupported. What's listed at the top, GOLD aside, is basically the official information, and we don't have to pay much attention to it. What matters to us is what's listed below: about Forbidden West, the first user on the list says no, he's encountered a problem with the controls, but literally everyone below him is giving a positive review.
In those comments we also find configurations, which In many cases it is to increase the VRAM and/or lower the graphics quality, but ProtonDB should be the reference to know if a game is compatible with the Deck or not. It is not official information, but it is what happens on the ground.
Whether you choose one information or another, this is how you can find out if a game works on your Steam Deck.