Have your game crashing before it opens, or in the middle of the game, is not ideal. Add to that the ability for small text, a small UI, and controls designed for players with a keyboard, and not all games are worth playing on the Steam Deck right now.
Thankfully, Valve is constantly testing games available on Steam and marking them as show their compatibility on the Deck—And lists some problems you might encounter for each, both in the Steam Store and before installation. This is called the Deck Verified program, which is basically a series of tests, run through a script, to see how the games perform. Valve also has people who download, install, and run through the games to see if the controls work, the keyboard pops up when you click a text input field, and what the UI looks like. any.
“We have a very, very large catalog and we won’t be able to go through it as quickly as we would like,” said Lawrence Yang, a UX designer at Valve who currently works on the Steam Deck. He’s not joking; There are over 60,000 games on Steam at the moment. “But we can do certain things, like see a list of games that people play, or a wish list that pre-orders the Deck, and we prioritize those, so the people who get Deck on day one, we’ve probably tested most of their library at that point. “
Yang also said that even if a game is marked as Playable instead of Verified, that doesn’t mean you should skip it right away. “We just want our customers to know what to expect when they launch the game — and everyone’s threshold will be different.”
There are several ways to check which games are compatible on the Steam Deck. Here’s how to do it:
Your game on the Steam Deck
If you have a Steam Deck in hand, you can check the compatibility of the games you’ve purchased by tapping Steam on the left side of the panel and scroll to Library. There are two categories here to check compatibility: Great on Deck and All games.
Great on Deck, as the name suggests, will only show you games that Valve has verified as active on the Steam Deck. This includes Death Stranding, Hades, Disco Elysium, Jackbox, Portal 2and more.
In All Games, hovering over a game’s thumbnail will reveal a small round icon in the lower right that indicates how well it will play on the Deck. There are four options — a green tick for Verified, an orange one I for Playable but with warning, a gray question mark if the game’s playability is currently Unknown and a gray circle with a line through it if the game is listed as Unknown support.
To find more information about the game’s playability, click on it and select Game Info (you’ll see a circular icon next to it, so it’s easier to find). Below the wallpaper for the game you will see a box next to it Steam floor compatibility titled Detail; click this. If it’s a Verified game, this screen will say it’s “fully working” on the Deck. If it’s playable, it will say it “works on the Steam Deck, but may require extra effort to interact or configure.” It will then show you what elements might not work well on the Deck. If it is marked as Unknown, it will say “Valve is still working on this title” without providing any further information – at which point you can choose to play the game yourself. play or wait until it is reviewed. If it’s listed as Unsupported, it says Valve’s testing shows that “some or all of these games are currently inactive on the Steam Deck.”
Via the Steam Deck Store
If you haven’t purchased the game yet but would like to see how it will play on the Deck, you can do so through the Steam Store.
On the Deck, press Steam button and select Shop. Search for a game you’re interested in, or scroll through until you find one that interests you. Similar to when viewing games in your Library, hovering over a game thumbnail in the Store will show you a circular indicator icon, this time on the top right instead of the bottom the right.
