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Valve detail Steam Frame and Steam Machine Verified requirements at GDC 2026

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Last updated: 11 Mar 2026 at 12:27 pm UTC

GDC 2026 is going on and Valve are doing some talks giving more info on lots of things - like how games will be Verified for the Steam Frame and Steam Machine. While we can't yet see videos of the actual talks, we can at least get the info directly from Valve on this since they've included a public set of slides from their talks.

We still don't know exactly when they will release, or even the pricing yet - but Valve did just recently reconfirm they're coming during 2026.

We already know the general requirements for Steam Deck Verified, and in a few ways it's similar for the Steam Frame and Steam Machine but tweaked for their power differences. And in the case of the VR Steam Frame, it's different again due to the standalone mode that's possible with it.

Here's the Steam Machine Verified details:

What's interesting here, is that Valve's own advertising on the official Steam Machine page says it supports "4K gaming at 60 FPS with FSR", but for the Verified status they're expecting 30FPS at 1080p.

And the Steam Frame Verified details:

For the Steam Frame, they're only verifying against standalone play. Since streaming from your PC will depend on your PC specifications. They also highlight the two main different ways that developers will have their games run on the Steam Frame which will be either through Proton with FEX, or Lepton:

Valve clearly note once again that anti-cheat is a bit problematic with kernel-level access and secure boot, but some like Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye are easy to enable. They also reiterate to developers to opt in for SteamOS as a whole and not specifically for the Steam Deck that we've seen a few developers using Anti-Cheat Expert (ACE) do. More on all that on our anti-cheat page.

The SteamOS Compatible system also got a mention, for all non-Valve devices. Valve highlighted here how the Linux Desktop audience is growing - which is something we've been directly tracking.

See their full slides for all the info.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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11 comments

eev 4 hours ago
I always interpreted "4K at 60 fps with FSR" being that you'll use Gamescope's FSR upscale for 4K with games that you can't run at that resolution natively, so verified requiring 1080p minimum makes sense as that probably upscales fine, but 30FPS maybe implies they're gonna rely on framegen? I'm really not a fan of that.
Liam Dawe 4 hours ago
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It wouldn't be Gamescope FSR, as that's stuck at FSR1. More likely they mean in-game FSR.
tarmo888 2 hours ago
Confused. Only 2 paths for standalone Frame apps? Does that mean there will be no native Linux ARM apps? Through Lepton is as native as we get?
Liam Dawe 2 hours ago
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Quoting: tarmo888Confused. Only 2 paths for standalone Frame apps? Does that mean there will be no native Linux ARM apps? Through Lepton is as native as we get?
It's more a case that most devs are unlikely to do Native Linux builds.
mr-victory 2 hours ago
Quoting: tarmo888Confused. Only 2 paths for standalone Frame apps? Does that mean there will be no native Linux ARM apps? Through Lepton is as native as we get?
It's not like we have many closed source Linux + ARM apps right now...
tarmo888 2 hours ago
Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: tarmo888Confused. Only 2 paths for standalone Frame apps? Does that mean there will be no native Linux ARM apps? Through Lepton is as native as we get?
It's more a case that most devs are unlikely to do Native Linux builds.
I get that, I am interested if there is at least an option, like with native Linux x86_64.
tarmo888 1 hour ago
Quoting: mr-victory
Quoting: tarmo888Confused. Only 2 paths for standalone Frame apps? Does that mean there will be no native Linux ARM apps? Through Lepton is as native as we get?
It's not like we have many closed source Linux + ARM apps right now...
Not sure what you mean, there are tons of Raspberry Pi apps for Linux ARM64. Steam Frame probably too weak to run most flat 3D games standalone, but should not have problems with 2D games that can even run on Pi.

Last edited by tarmo888 on 11 Mar 2026 at 3:29 pm UTC
Ehvis 1 hour ago
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Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: tarmo888Confused. Only 2 paths for standalone Frame apps? Does that mean there will be no native Linux ARM apps? Through Lepton is as native as we get?
It's more a case that most devs are unlikely to do Native Linux builds.
I don't even think there is a game engine that exports native Linux arm builds. Although they should be there for mac, so who knows what can happen in the future.
tarmo888 44 minutes ago
Quoting: Ehvis
Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: tarmo888Confused. Only 2 paths for standalone Frame apps? Does that mean there will be no native Linux ARM apps? Through Lepton is as native as we get?
It's more a case that most devs are unlikely to do Native Linux builds.
I don't even think there is a game engine that exports native Linux arm builds. Although they should be there for mac, so who knows what can happen in the future.
Many don't have Windows ARM export too in the UI, but that doesn't mean you can't do it. On Windows, many use scripts to make build anyway, so Windows ARM exports have been available for them for quite some time, even on x86_64 machine. On Linux, all you need is hardware with ARM64.

Godot has Linux ARM64 and even ARM32 in the UI and you don't even need ARM hardware.

Last edited by tarmo888 on 11 Mar 2026 at 4:01 pm UTC
Stella 39 minutes ago
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This would be great if the Steam Deck system wasn't so terribly inconsistent. I frequently find games that are listed as 'Unsupported' but that run fine, and 'Verified' games with severe performance issues, such as Horizon Zero Dawn (the OG has tons of stuttering). And as for the Remaster, it's Verified despite having the exact same engine as Forbidden West (Unsupported due to 'bad performance') and performing identically.... yea I already gave up trying to make sense of this mess

Last edited by Stella on 11 Mar 2026 at 3:58 pm UTC
Ehvis 25 minutes ago
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Quoting: tarmo888Godot has Linux ARM64 and even ARM32 in the UI and you don't even need ARM hardware.
Cool! I know what I have to do. 😁
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