Prospective Steam Deck owners close to exploding with anticipation over their shiny new handheld’s imminent delivery can now increase their levels of tumult and titillation with a new online Steam tool that checks your existing game library for compatibility.
The tool is very simple to use. Just point your browser here, log in with your Steam credentials, and your game library will be checked against the current compatibility list.
Valve is reviewing the entire Steam catalog for compatibility with its imminent handheld, which stands to have the greatest launch library of any gaming device, ever, with over 400 verified games listed on the unofficial SteamDB compatibility list at the time of writing and over 500 playable. There are four levels of compatibility a game can aspire to: Verified, which means it will work well on a Steam Deck right out of the box; Playable, which means some manual tweaking of settings may be required; Unsupported, which means it won’t work; and Unknown, which means it hasn’t been checked yet.
Verified games must hit four major criteria besides running well: they must have full controller support; not display any warning messages; support the native resolution of the Steam Deck screen; and if using Proton, Valve’s Windows-to-Linux compatibility layer, both the game and its middleware, including any anti-cheat measures, must be supported. A compatibility badge will be shown against each title installed on the Deck, and the handheld’s Steam store page will show Verified games on its first page, with the full store and catalog available via a second tab.
Major titles on the Verified list include Deathloop, Horizon Zero Dawn, Death Stranding, and Dishonored. The Unsupported list, however, currently contains a few disappointments in the form of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, id Software’s Rage 2, and recent time-bending hit Lemnis Gate. The Witcher III, XCOM 2, GTA V, and Skyrim, meanwhile, sit in the middle Playable tier.
There is, of course, still time for games to be patched before the Deck’s official launch, and work will continue afterwards. “This is an ongoing evaluation of the entire catalog,” says the Steam Deck Verified web page. “A game's rating can change over time - titles will be re-reviewed as the developer releases updates or the Deck's software improves.”
