Quoting: KohlyKohlThe icon for Playable makes it seem like it'll have issues when in reality it will not.

Well, it will if you’re a non-technically inclined user who wants a "just press play" experience, depending on what criteria caused the game to fail to attain Verified.

Quoting: finaldestI also Imagine that game devs will do what it takes to get that little green "seal of quality" badge next to their game so as to be featured in the primary store page on the deck unit.

Good little point there I hadn’t considered! Many companies will want front page visibility enough to make some simple tweaks.

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: SalvatosDue to "appropriate controller input icons" alone, I feel like a lot of games will fall short of Verified. I rarely see the right icons for my DualShock.

"Appropriate" is "appropriate to the Steam Deck," and they accept Xbox prompts as a suitable substitute for those.

Ah, good to know! I forgot/failed to notice the Deck uses ABXY as well, so that’s a convenient way for Valve to sidestep that issue completely.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GuestThe chosen terms are not very clear to me.
"Verified, Playable, Unsupported and Unknown"
Is "Playable" better or worse than "Verified"? What does "verified" even mean? It could mean it has been verified as not working.
"Unsupported", ok, but it doesn’t tell if it’s working or not.
"Unknown" is of course not helping much either.

I’m not asking for the answers, just saying they should choose terms that immediately make sense.

They seem clear enough to me.
Verified is often used on major Internet platforms to mean "curated and authorized by the platform owner". Pretty much a seal of approval to buy without worry.
Playable pretty strongly implies that it’s not more than just playable. It works, but has issues. Especially clear when paired with the icon and the knowledge that it could have been Verified instead.
Unsupported means it’s not meant to be played on the Deck and you’re on your own if you decide to buy it anyway. Sends a pretty clear message even though it doesn’t tell you exactly what’s wrong about it, which the details modal presumably will address.
Unknown can’t be much clearer, really. No compatibility info available. Buy at your own risk or check the forums.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Want to see what they've got so far? You can check it out on Deck Verified.

Are you seeing an actual list there, Liam? I only see this text:

The team is currently working on a way for you to be able to check the compatibility category of each of the games in your own library ahead of launch.

In addition, you’ll soon be able to see which games in the Steam catalog have already gone through Steam Deck review, and what compatibility category they fall in. More on this soon.

----
Due to "appropriate controller input icons" alone, I feel like a lot of games will fall short of Verified. I rarely see the right icons for my DualShock.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quite! After so many companies got cold feet following the Steam Machines not panning out, it’s a relief to see the industry still willing to go along with Valve on this new approach :)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: elmapuli was trying to figure out what anti cheat solution an specific game uses and found this usefull site:

https://levvvel.com/games-with-kernel-level-anti-cheat-software/ [External Link]

Thanks for the link! I expected more games, I didn't really see anything there that I might be interested in. Probably a side effect of not paying attention to Windows game releases in the first place :P

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: InhaleOblivionGuild Wars 2 has had this feature built into it's launcher for a while now with patches. Basically you can update to about 25%-30% of the patch and load the game up while it continues to update in the background.

The first Guild Wars did that too. I remember having to wait several minutes for each new map to download in-game on my slow Internet connection, making it nearly impossible to find anyone to play with without getting kicked out or left behind.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

If it works anything like the shader pre-caching, I’m not looking forward to it. 2+ hours of processing for no noticeable gains and it has to do it again every time the client is updated (or whatever the actual trigger is)? No thanks.

Though to be fair, that last part seems to have gotten better with the implementation of their new Downloads page.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Liam DaweOkay fair enough, it's clearly problematic. Have removed the provided auto-linker for GOG and made our own using their properly branded domain which GOG was smart enough to make.

The link to Linux games only still goes through adtraction and does not show Linux games only... edit: or keep any filter, actually.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Whitewolfe80Whilst I like this as this is how PC gaming was you either had a playable demo or a shareware disc. It's something I d love to see return given how cheap USB drives are especially in bulk a shareware return would be welcomed

The amount of electronic waste would be dizzying.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: ArehandoroGibbous was an overall very good game, and probably near-mage too, but somehow the art looks of lower quality than it predecessor. It also looks like the world is based on will be the same than Gibbous.

Having backed the original campaign, they went overboard with the art quality for such a small team and I'm pretty sure they are intentionally keeping themselves in check this time around to finish the game in a more reasonable timeframe and within budget. On the other hand they've gained experience and skills in the process, so I don't doubt that it's still going to look good, albeit less finely polished.

View this comment - View article - View full comments