1 week from release, Steam Deck hits well over 640 Playable games

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: MohandevirAs for the other 1/4, most will dualboot and a small minority will replace SteamOS with Windows. I have even witnessed a Windows fanboy starting to change it's point of view and then having doubts about stripping SteamOS.

Like I said, gut feeling from reactions I read/see, but it feels positive.

Valve seem to have really nailed it, this time.

Good job!

Sounds good, thanks for telling.
I'm surprised people are thinking about dual booting though.
Did they tell why they would want to keep a Linux partition when they are doing the work of installing Windows?

Mostly because of the ootb SteamOS experience that looks shiny and custom tailored for a handheld vs Windows' desktop weirdness on a 7" screen (K+M required per some Aya Neo or GPD users comments). AMD FSR integration was named many times, better battery autonomy too, suspend resume feature, SteamOS' smaller footprint.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 19 February 2022 at 7:06 pm UTC

Quoting: GuestI understand all that, only some of the "playable" games really shouldn't be, as they have issues, like crashing mid-game or corrupting save data.

Issues that are yet to be fixed by devs should mean a game fails the verification completely.

But…it's no worse an experience than you'd get playing on a PC? Because the Deck is a (mobile) PC. People live with crashes and corruptions on the desktop (they're annoying, and we hope and expect they get fixed, but I bet there are zero games on Steam that haven't crashed at least once for someone out there). Why should we suddenly hold the Deck to a much higher standard? "Playable", and even "verified", don't mean "Valve certify that this game is utterly, 100% bug-free and you will never have a problem with it or your money back"; they just mean that that game has passed some or all of Valve's criteria for how good an experience playing it on an 8-inch screen with a controller by default will be.

The lookup page seems to have gotten an upgrade: Date of last change, and last state as tooltip.
And you can lookup your wish list as well. (It might mark unreleased games though. :D )

Where would I look up what's Steam's favorite way to run a game, like Proton (with version?) or native?


Last edited by Eike on 20 February 2022 at 6:01 pm UTC

I guess I can see where you're coming from, but I think that's an overly pessimistic way to see it. I've lots of talk of people buying it as a laptop replacement, so I don't think it's true that everyone buying it is getting for the "console experience" (I'm certainly not). Remember, in order to put in a reservation you have to have a Steam account (and have to have had it for at least a month for the first three days reservations were open), so basically all the people getting a Steam Deck for at least the next several months* are going to be people who are familiar with PC gaming and its quirks (because not even Windows games are 100% bug free), who've likely seen Valve's reminders that it's just a mobile PC, and who aren't going to throw up their hands in despair and swear financial ruin on Valve if they find so much as a single bug. (Who knows, it might even prove to be a less buggy experience than a lot of Windows gamers are expecting!) Game-breaking bugs should be fixed, of course, and I expect they will pretty promptly once the outcry of players reaches a critical mass.

*Based on the fact that I managed to get my reservation in by 1.5 hours after they opened, and I'm still "after Q2 2022".