With review samples of the Steam Deck now going out to select media outlets, it appears Valve is ramping up Steam Deck game verification with 243 titles now supported as of this writing.
As reported by GamingOnLinux, this is a massive jump in supported titles in very little time. Less than a week ago, the amount of Deck Verified titles was just 120.
This could be good news not just for consumers who will get their hands on the Steam Deck at the end of the month, but also for media outlets doing full reviews of the Steam Deck. Reviewers will be able to give us a more realistic view of what Valve's Deck Verified process is capable of, and what we can expect from it.
It will be interesting to see if Valve maintains this sort of pace, Valve has already stated it wants to get the entire Steam library compatible under the Steam Deck, which is a lofty goal. With more than 50,000 titles already in the Steam Libary, Valve will need to move fast if it wants to get all titles supported in the next couple of years.
The Deck Verified program is a focused on making games in the Steam Library run as comfortably and smoothly as possible on the Deck.
The verification program is split into four categories: Verified, Playable, Unsupported, and Unknown. Verified is where the game works perfectly on Steam Deck;. Playable means the game is capable of running on the Deck, but might require some user intervention to make the game run on the console; Unsupported means the game does not work on the Deck; and unknown means Valve has not checked if the game at all for verification.
Initial reviews (more like previews) of the Steam Deck dropped just a few days ago and gave us a good idea of what the Steam Deck is capable of. In a video by LinusTechTips, first impressions were very good with the Steam Deck outperforming several competing Windows-based handhelds for just a fraction of the cost.
Even more impressive is the fact that Valve's Steam Deck is doing all this on the company's Linux-based SteamOS, with several of the titles demoed running through the ProtonDB compatibility layer. For instance in Control, LinusTechTips tested the game at low settings and achieved nearly 60FPS at the console's native 800p resolution.
One game, in particular, had strange performance characteristics: Forza Horizon 5. When LinusTechTips tested the game, they noticed strange "rubber banding" effects while driving, despite the frame rate being consistently high. Once more games are tested, it'll be interesting to see if bugs like this happen again with other titles and how quickly Valve can fix them.
