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We've been wondering what Valve had planned to show off Steam Deck compatibility for games and now they've launched Deck Verified as their answer.

Valve say they are reviewing the entire Steam catalogue on the Steam Deck, with each of them gaining a category that it falls under that will show up across Steam from the store to your own Steam Library. The ratings will be split across Verified, Playable, Unsupported and Unknown. This is good because there's a lot of reasons why games will mix between perfect and unplayable on Steam Deck and the Arch Linux-based SteamOS it ships with.

To be actually Verified the games need to hit these four points:

  • Input - The title should have full controller support, use appropriate controller input icons, and automatically bring up the on-screen keyboard when needed.
  • Display - The game should support the default resolution of Steam Deck (1280x800 or 1280x720), have good default settings, and text should be legible.
  • Seamlessness - The title shouldn’t display any compatibility warnings, and if there’s a launcher it should be navigable with a controller.
  • System Support - If running through Proton, the game and all its middleware should be supported by Proton. This includes anti-cheat support.

When you're playing on a Steam Deck, the first tab in the Steam store will also only highlight games that are "great" on the Steam Deck too.

Check out their video explainer below:

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Want to see what their plan is? You can check it out on Deck Verified.

Valve also put up a Steam Deck Compatibility Review Process guide, which goes over the steps required for developers to take a look at. It gives an interesting insight into exactly what Valve and developers will be doing. Developers however will not be able to remove their game from being listed as Valve say the Deck is "an extension of Steam onto a new portable PC form factor, and so customers both expect and have access to the same store and library that they would on any other PC".

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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141 comments
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Mal Oct 19, 2021
  • Supporter
Agreed. What I meant is that it's just right and intuitive that the badge is active BY DEFAULT when navigating from the deck, regardless of what publishers thinks of it, as much as that it is inactive by default when browing outside. Then, ofc, everything is configurable and people is free to turn on and off what they want. But the default configuration should always be the most useful to the user in the context of his current experience.

It wouldn't be savy to require gamers to turn on the badge (and learn somehow that the badge even exist in the first place) because by default it's off to not "offend over sensitive" pub that decided to veto it on its products. Treating publishers as customers and gamers as suppliers is another famous store policy and it's not exaclty bringing popularity or profits to its owner nor good experiences to whoever spends money there.
CFWhitman Oct 19, 2021
Quoting: Alm888So… In other words, Valve acknowledges that their "all your library should work" and "no porting required" promises are not feasible.

I wouldn't say that. Valve said that their goal is 100% compatibility. This is supposed to be a step in that direction. They're hoping to see more and more games make it to at least "Playable" status (with the possible exception of things that require specialized hardware, like a VR headset).

Valve never "promised" that "all your library should work" with "no porting required." They said that was their goal. Of course "no porting" does not necessarily mean 'no tweaks.'


Last edited by CFWhitman on 19 October 2021 at 5:44 pm UTC
Vasya Sovari Oct 19, 2021
Not loving this.
Valve appear to be making no effort at all to distinguish Steamdeck from desktop Linux/Proton.
This is an absurd oversight that may actually hurt sales.
It would be a truly painful irony if the SteamDeck ends up relegating Linux from 2nd class to 3rd class citizens.
Mal Oct 19, 2021
  • Supporter
Quoting: CFWhitman
Quoting: Alm888So… In other words, Valve acknowledges that their "all your library should work" and "no porting required" promises are not feasible.

I wouldn't say that. Valve said that their goal is 100% compatibility. This is supposed to be a step in that direction. They're hoping to see more and more games make it to at least "Playable" status (with the possible exception of things that require specialized hardware, like a VR headset).

Valve never "promised" that "all your library should work" with "no porting required." The said that was their goal. Of course "no porting" does not necessarily mean 'no tweaks.'

Yep, you say that because like most people on this site we understand how things are made and works. But the Average Joe out there (and the press doesn't help) understood exactly that: every windows game is "compatible" with the deck. And for me that was the biggest failure risk for the entire project. Things that for us are obvious, that for instance you can't exactly play Stellaris on the deck despite being native linux, are not obvious for the average person. Nor they should be. A person could learn with a commercial that Stellaris has also a console edition and expect that to be the game it can buy on his deck. It's Steam responsibility to inform them that this is not the case. A launcher that is not controller friendly and a game interface that is not made for that resolution and screen size in addition for being optimized for m+k should always award a non deck playable tag. Then one can always decide to attach m+k to the deck and connect it to tv or monitor with a docking station and have a lot of pleasant, better than console games with Stellaris. But that's not the obvious use case of a deck customer and Steam has to acknowledge that and help people do the right purchases.
Mohandevir Oct 19, 2021
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: Mohandevir
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: GuestSo, this is essentially a Proton whitelist 2.0. The one that Valve have abandoned after a couple of Proton releases.

I do hope that native Linux games will get their check and hopefully their badge early.

Not sure about this one... Have you tried running Shadow of Mordor native on anything else than Ubuntu? The "Unsupported OS" pop-up window is pretty anoying. Not sure it qualifies for the "Supported" badge.

Played through it on Debian, yes. I'm not saying they'll all get their badge "for free". They'd need to get rid of the message at least for SteamOS.

Not to mention the CPU Governor one that is, from what I understand, not really relevant anymore (new CPU governor in latest kernel that it doesn't account for). These Feral ports could be updated to remove these alerts and probably the Feral launcher too, imo.
BielFPs Oct 19, 2021
Quoting: EikeWant to know what runs before buying the Deck? Activate the option, have a look.
Since we are discussing this in a Linux focused community, it's safe to assume that most people here are at least in the "power user" level of knowledge of how computer works, so I understand that sometime it's easy for us to forget that this kind of information is not accessible for a majority of people.

You have to consider that: While this is obvious to people like us, there's also people who don't know how to check this before and will be buying Deck only based on the marketing made by the internet.

Imagine this hypothetical case:
-A kid likes to play PUBG (example) and see on the internet that there's this "new console" that can run steam games (driven only by marketing) and asks their parents to buy it intending to just play PUBG on it. The parents them spent money buying this console, only to discover that "the console isn't working" for some reason (remember both the kid and the parents doesn't have the technical knowledge in this case). Them the parents demands refund because because of it claiming that the "video game isn't working properly". In this case, while we (power users or above) know that technically in this case are the parents fault for not checking this information before, and maybe resulting in denial of the refund. This could open a case for a possible lawsuit against Valve / the store that sold it for them claiming that this was false advertised.

You have to think Eike that, different from consoles that people buy the device before buying the games, in the Steam Deck case people already bought the games before buying the device, and "less tech" people may be confused thinking that "any steam game works with steam console", and has to be prepared for those people making this kind of information accessible, in order to avoid possible legal problems (so it better not be opt-in info).

Imagine you buying a play station 5 and your play station game for some reason doesn't working on it, absurd right? that's how a lot of people will see steam deck if it gets popular
Eike Oct 19, 2021
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: BielFPsImagine this hypothetical case:
-A kid likes to play PUBG (example) and see on the internet that there's this "new console" that can run steam games (driven only by marketing) and asks their parents to buy it intending to just play PUBG on it. The parents them spent money buying this console, only to discover that "the console isn't working" for some reason (remember both the kid and the parents doesn't have the technical knowledge in this case). Them the parents demands refund because because of it claiming that the "video game isn't working properly". In this case, while we (power users or above) know that technically in this case are the parents fault for not checking this information before, and maybe resulting in denial of the refund.

Yes.

Quoting: BielFPsThis could open a case for a possible lawsuit against Valve / the store that sold it for them claiming that this was false advertised.

No.

What hasn't been promised doesn't have to work.

It might disappoint some people, totally, but there's no ground for a reasonable law suit.
CFWhitman Oct 19, 2021
Quoting: BielFPsMostly the same situation:

-Opt-in: The majority of users will never activate it, "defeating" the purpose of putting it in the first place.

-Opt-out: Everyone will see the mark of shame, resulting in possible bad PR

This is not really a proper evaluation of the "Opt-in" situation. If the majority of users don't activate it, it (at least in theory) will be because the majority of users don't care whether it works on the Steam Deck or not. As long as Valve makes it clear enough (by opt-in or another method) that the evaluation is in regards to the Steam Deck and the Steam Deck alone*, it shouldn't be a problem, and calling it a 'mark of shame' would be a fairly substantial exaggeration.

*(I know it would apply to anything that ran Steam OS and generally to Linux, but that wouldn't matter to the general public at first.)
CatKiller Oct 19, 2021
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  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: damarrinFor some reason, Valve decided to take these from Playstation and they’re L1,R2 and so on.

The Xbox names are stupid (WTF is a "bumper?"), but it's mostly because there are five of those buttons on each side. You wouldn't want "right bumper," "right other bumper," "right other other bumper," and so on.

Quoting: 3zekielAnd considering the outcry every time a game dev removes the ps button when they port to PC, I doubt I am the only one who prefers dualshock. I also don't think x360 is all that popular ? Maybe in US, but worldwide I highly doubt it. Maybe it had some extra usage due to being easier to setup at some point, but I don't think it was out of love.

PlayStation controller support on Windows has historically been quite bad, and Microsoft did a big push for the Xbox controller being a "Windows standard," so developers that think PC = Windows also tend to think that PC controller = Xbox.


Last edited by CatKiller on 19 October 2021 at 2:53 pm UTC
CFWhitman Oct 19, 2021
Quoting: EikeRockPaperShotgun has it. Of course you can check from PC, everything else would be plain stupid. You want to know what runs before buying the Deck, not only afterwards.

Yes, as long as it's clear that being able to check it from a Windows computer does not mean that it will show up by default on a Windows computer. That was Mal's point when he said that he can configure Steam to show him Windows games or not.
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