In a recent update on the Steamworks Group on Steam, Valve gave an update on Steam Deck Verification and testing appears to be ramping up lately.
Valve confirmed in the post that they have already tested "thousands of titles" for Deck Verified. Their previous focus has been to prioritize titles based on playtime and interest from people who have reserved a Steam Deck, which appears to be an automatic process. They've also now given access to a small set of developers and publishers the ability to directly submit titles for review.
On top of that, they're beginning to increase the amount of titles going through verification, which makes sense considering we're getting close to the Steam Deck release on February 25.
Going by SteamDB, there's now 60 titles (as of publishing time) that are Deck Verified. Some of the most recent additions to this include: Baba Is You, Daymare: 1998, Hellish Quart, Death Trash, Paint the Town Red, Sam & Max Save the World, Roundguard and Wytchwood. There's a bunch that are also only noted as Playable, due to various issues like launchers, requiring the touch screen for initial setup and others. The number of games you can play with a few minor issues will be much larger overall.
Since they've tested thousands, they're of course not showing the entirety of what is actually Verified yet. Expect plenty more to suddenly appear over this month.
For example, I just confirmed that the transcoding issue of Marcus intro video from the Borderlands 3 wasn't fixed yet:
The original mp4 file has eight audio tracks, meanwhile the transcoded version only has english audio and that is unacceptable.
It seems Valve don't give a shit about this specific issue..
Quoting: PhiladelphusQuoting: Comandante ÑoñardoNobody will buy this for just 100 or 200 supported games.Yeah, the Nintendo Switch only had 10 games available for it at launch, and we all remember how no one bought that thing!
…oh wait.
Well, the difference would be "You can play all of these ten thousands of games - oops, you can't" vs. "You can play ten games - yes, you can".
And Zelda.
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoMy big concern about this are the WMV and MP4 videos used in a lot of videos.
For example, I just confirmed that the transcoding issue of Marcus intro video from the Borderlands 3 wasn't fixed yet:
The original mp4 file has eight audio tracks, meanwhile the transcoded version only has english audio and that is unacceptable.
It seems Valve don't give a shit about this specific issue..
Has it been reported on GitHub?
Quoting: EikeAlso - Videos with english audio are a big improvement to videos not playing at all or even crashing the game. I personally still wonder why they wouldn't just use gstreamer if available, but well...Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoMy big concern about this are the WMV and MP4 videos used in a lot of videos.
For example, I just confirmed that the transcoding issue of Marcus intro video from the Borderlands 3 wasn't fixed yet:
The original mp4 file has eight audio tracks, meanwhile the transcoded version only has english audio and that is unacceptable.
It seems Valve don't give a shit about this specific issue..
Has it been reported on GitHub?
Quoting: constAlso - Videos with english audio are a big improvement to videos not playing at all or even crashing the game. I personally still wonder why they wouldn't just use gstreamer if available, but well...
I imagine that doing that for the default Steam Deck may be as legally problematic as distributing MF libraries.
Quoting: EhvisBindings to gstreamer itself wouldn't be the problem and Proton isn't only on SteamDeck. Current behavior could still be the default, but if users install additional codecs, there's no reason not to use them.Quoting: constAlso - Videos with english audio are a big improvement to videos not playing at all or even crashing the game. I personally still wonder why they wouldn't just use gstreamer if available, but well...
I imagine that doing that for the default Steam Deck may be as legally problematic as distributing MF libraries.
The whole codec situation is messy. They probably found a good enough solution that still lacks a litte in execution.
Last edited by const on 2 February 2022 at 5:10 pm UTC
Proton does not use your system libraries, it uses the Soldier runtime, Breaking out of the container and finding suitable system libraries for video would probably both be hard and something of a compatibility nightmare.
They could have licensed a proprietary H264 plugin for GStreamer but seems to have decided not to. This solution with re-encoding the videos does seem more cumbersome but it's probably better in the long run.
Quoting: EikeQuoting: Comandante ÑoñardoMy big concern about this are the WMV and MP4 videos used in a lot of videos.
For example, I just confirmed that the transcoding issue of Marcus intro video from the Borderlands 3 wasn't fixed yet:
The original mp4 file has eight audio tracks, meanwhile the transcoded version only has english audio and that is unacceptable.
It seems Valve don't give a shit about this specific issue..
Has it been reported on GitHub?
Yes, by me.
And without an official answer.
Quoting: constQuoting: EhvisBindings to gstreamer itself wouldn't be the problem and Proton isn't only on SteamDeck. Current behavior could still be the default, but if users install additional codecs, there's no reason not to use them.Quoting: constAlso - Videos with english audio are a big improvement to videos not playing at all or even crashing the game. I personally still wonder why they wouldn't just use gstreamer if available, but well...
I imagine that doing that for the default Steam Deck may be as legally problematic as distributing MF libraries.
The whole codec situation is messy. They probably found a good enough solution that still lacks a litte in execution.
I specifically mentioned the default Steam Deck because they can't install an unlicenced codec on there. And since only a fraction of the people would try to get one themselves, it's not an option for the Steam Deck.
Quoting: PhiladelphusThat doesn't mean the team is manually testing each and every game. I just can't see how that would be practical or efficient. But of course, I don't have Valve money, so perhaps I lack the correct perspective.Quoting: Mountain ManI just can't imagine Valve has a team dedicated to doing nothing but installing games on the Deck and making sure they work properly, especially not when they claim to have tested thousands of games already, which leads me believe that the process has a good deal of automation.Didn't they say at some point last year that they were hiring people to do just that? Though yes, there are certainly parts of it that could be automated (like "does it start on SteamOS 3.0 in the first place"); maybe they just need people to check things like the text size and controller glyphs and the like.
Fake edit: found it, from an interview with Greg Coomer and Lawrence Yang in Rock, Paper, Shotgun:
QuoteSteam does have a lot of games, and Valve is putting significant effort into this review program. We've hired an additional group of testers specifically for Steam Deck compatibility, and will continue to hire additional staff to support this group. It will take time to review the Steam catalog (in addition to the new titles that are being launched all the time), and we see some version of this process being in place for the foreseeable future.
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