Steam Deck has been one of the phenomena of the year. Undoubtedly, the most consistent attempt to bring into the hands of users the portable game concept for the latest releases and important in the market and that are landing, even, in the new generation of consoles. A fundamental difference that separates it from Nintendo Switch, which has been the undisputed queen of sales in the video game market in recent years.
Be careful with your Steam library
The fact is that if you have just landed in the Steam Deck universe by getting one, or you are thinking of giving it to yourself for Christmas, you should know that not all of your steam library is available to launch within this consolidated PC. For many reasons (interface, technical issues or the number of errors that appear on the screen) a title from six years or six months ago might not go as it should and it is important to know in case many of the purchases you have made on the Valve store then you can’t use them.
Now, how can we know the games that are going to work for us? Valve has devised four categories that define how each of the releases it has in its store will be executed. The first, the check green, it means that there is no problem, that those titles will work perfectly in Steam Deck, as if we started them on a desktop or laptop PC. The second is the yellow circle with an “i”, which already tells us about minor problems: we can run it but it is more than likely that we will face errors such as interface text that is too small or inconsistencies that the user can correct by tapping on the settings.
The third is the forbidden sign. At this point there is little doubt: a game marked this way will not work in 90% of cases. The other 10% corresponds to small mod and tricks that the community comes to work to ensure compatibility. And finally, we have that question mark that tells us that, if we want to play it, we should try our luck to start it because Valve has not tested it yet. In the latter case, many games run smoothly and even with minor tweaks manage to do it perfectly.
Where to check the new compatibilities
All these icons are changing with the passing of the months since Valve is updating the library permanently so that more and more titles work on your Steam Deck. So every time you enter the store, or your library, you could see how changes occur in the state of each title practically every week. But since it is very difficult to know exactly when this change occurs, there is nothing like going to an official source to verify it.
Happy Halloween! Here’s a quick look at the top 10 October releases played on Steam Deck, sorted by daily average user count.
And yes, Vampire Survivors is still here because they recently graduated from Early Access (congrats!). https://t.co/OjOfyXJJsG
October 31, 2022 • 22:23
In fact, Valve’s Twitter account for Steam Deck is one of the most useful you can follow, because it lists each new release or classic development that gets certified to run on the consolidated PC. What’s included updates of SteamOS and all the extra functions that are added periodically within the hardware.
In any case, there are cases of games that theoretically are not going to work and that are achieved by adjusting a few small parameters. But if you think so, we’ll tell you that at another time, right?
