Steam Deck has just completed a week on the market and it does so by marking a significant milestone, after exceed a thousand compatible titles. And although they may not seem like many, few consoles can boast such a catalog after their release.
Yes, it is true that Steam Deck has an advantage, being a console based on PC games, but given the bar that Valve has set to estimate what games are compatible, including those considered ‘playable’ and those considered ‘verified’. And it is that Steam Deck does not understand games for Linux or Windows, but games that work well under its particular paradigm.
Thus, as we mentioned last week, it does not matter that the catalog of native Linux games on Steam exceeds 8,500 titles, which amounts to more than 20,000 when we add the Windows games executable on Linux through Proton. It doesn’t matter that Steam Deck is based on Linux either; the only thing that matters is that the games that Valve adds to the catalog of its new hybrid console work as well as possible.
Hence, having exceeded a thousand titles compatible with Steam Deck may seem like a lot or a little, depending on how you look at it. If you look at it from the perspective of the platform, which is still PC, there are very few, because Steam Deck plays with a very prominent advantage due to the huge catalog available. Of course, if you look at it from the perspective of the device itself, the figure is not bad at all, especially when a month ago it barely reached a hundred.
Those more than a thousand titles compatible with the Steam Deck, however, are divided into two groups: the ‘playable’ ones, those that can be played but that can cause some problem or require an additional configuration that complicates it; or the ‘verified’, games “fully functional on Steam Deck” and adapted to the device’s screen and controls. The good news is that this last group is the one that is growing the most.
At the time of publishing this post, Total Steam Deck supported games is 1,047, including 549 ‘verified’ and 479 ‘playable’ titles. At the same time, additions are also being ruled out and there are already 721 games marked as unsupported, either because they don’t even run on the console, or because the experience is so bad that without deep adaptation they are relegated. All this according to SteamDB data.
In short, 1,047 may seem like a pittance compared to the more than 93,000 Windows games listed on Steam, or compared to the more than 20,000 Linux-compatible games on Steam, but everything indicates that Valve is taking care that what It works for your new console and, on the other hand, the speed that they are taking to increase the catalog does not bode badly. At least in terms of… catalogue, yes.
