As I continue to use the Steam Deck that Valve sent over for both work and play, I tried Grand Theft Auto V and the initial setup was a massive nuisance. See also: How Valve Can Make the Deck Verified Program Better
This is a game that has gone through verification, to get a Deck "Playable" rating. This means it should work well but may have some minor annoyances like small text or a part requiring the touch screen. Here though, it was far worse and this is the short story of a semi-eventful Saturday night where I just wanted to play a game that I picked carefully enough — or so I thought.
On first launch with Proton 7, what it was verified against, it tells you it needs to install the Rockstar Launcher before you can play. The annoyance begins here of course as I've already waited on a 100GB download. I was at least pre-warned on this since I read the compatibility note. Fine then, let's do it. Except during the launcher install Rockstar gave an error telling me that it simply couldn't proceed. It gave an option to retry with a button I clicked, but that totally failed again. Clearly not a good experience right away. Playable — apparently.
So the next step was of course to restart the game entirely. Hit the Steam button for the Overlay, tell it to exit the game. Then reload it. Hooray! This got it to install the launcher and my face lights up with joy and anticipation to drive around and do silly things. Now it tells me I need an activation code. What code? Nothing told me I needed a code when I purchased it on Steam. Thinking it's a launcher error, I reloaded and it then broke completely. The launcher just didn't load any more and it dumped me back into my Steam Library. Tried three times, same problem. Tried a reboot, the issue persisted.
At this point, I'm annoyed. I think anyone would be. I decided to swap it over to Proton Experimental (tip: here's a guide on swapping Proton versions on Steam Deck), and that actually worked! I could get the launcher to load without fail through multiple tries but I still needed a code. Of course, normally, the desktop Steam client would've had a pop-up to tell you that you have a CD Key and the game might ask for it - no such thing happens on the Steam Deck.
Searching around, the CD Key can be found in the COG icon menu of the game in your Steam Library. Then go to Manage and the CD Key option is in there. Valve even give an option to copy it, which I did. Going back to the game, I couldn't figure out how to paste it in as the field just wouldn't get focus. After randomly clicking inside and around the input field, eventually i got the Steam Deck Keyboard to work with it but the paste button did nothing. A couple tries of this and eventually it pasted the key in properly. That was about 30 minutes after first clicking play.
For me, I don't really think any experience like that should be in the Playable category. Did no testing ever find any of these issues? How deep and repeated is the Deck Verified testing on each game? We really have no clue.
Thankfully, at least when it comes to performance, GTA V runs rather swimmingly on the Steam Deck so I've no complaints at all there.
I can name other titles where there's more issues like performance being problematic and yet they have a fully Verified tag on them. Vampire Survivors goes into single digit FPS towards the end of a battle when performance is most important, Horizon Zero Dawn can do too in places (even LinusTechTips noted that too, and we got a shout out in their recent video) and there's others. Borderlands 3 is another Playable that in places drops hard and stutters a lot. The two previous were mentioned in my initial Steam Deck review in case you missed it.
The thing to remember is that for something to succeed we also need to talk about shortcomings and general issues. This is not an attempt to derail the hype and momentum, more of a wish to see things get better.
Really, Valve needs to take another look at how they run Deck Verified if trust in it is to be a real thing. Otherwise, like my friend Nick from The Linux Experiment said in our big collaboration video, the green Verified tick will end up meaningless if strict standards aren't followed. The same of course applies to the Playable category too.
Additionally, could we please stop slapping a launcher on everything?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: Liam DaweQuoting: MohandevirJust read a comment from a Windows user that Vampire Survivors has the same issue on Windows desktop. It seems it's not Deck specific.The developer didn't verify it, Valve did.
Have you contacted the devs?
Not to sound too "tin foil hat", but isn't that the point? Valve has this really interesting position of being both necessary and almost invisible to the gamer at this point, especially with their involvement in the running of a game. No one's realistically going to blame Valve when a game doesn't work, even if it is genuinely Valve's fault ( proton, steam input... Etc). The fault is hidden from the user, we just see the game not working and blame the dev (who may not even be the source of the problem, let alone be able to fix it).
In a way it's a brilliant PR position to be in as Valve reaps the benefits of publicly supporting Linux (Proton! Steam Deck!) while dodging the major criticisms of hyping what is, essentially, an unsupported platform for many games (My games doesn't work!).
Either way, regardless of where the problems running the game come from, I do agree that if there's not some consistency with the Verified label, this thing is somewhat doomed.
Quoting: Liam DaweFrankly, I probably would have given up and played a different game.Quoting: PhiladelphusValid points and partly what I was alluding to, it doesn't really deserve Playable IMO when stuff like this happens. Valve don't really have a category it fits into. It's thoroughly frustrating too, because I'm not overstating that it took 30 minutes to get working through what I tried.QuoteFor me, I don't really think any experience like that should be in the Playable category. Did no testing ever find any of these issues? How deep and repeated is the Deck Verified testing on each game? We really have no clue.To be fair, what other category would it go into? It went through the verification process, so it couldn't be Unknown. It didn't fit in Verified (for whatever reason). You were able, technically, to get it to work (and it ran rather swimmingly), so it's not Unsupported. That leaves just one option: Playable. I'm not trying to score cheap points here, and I do think this is a problem, but it's a problem baked in to how Valve collapsed the infinite spectrum of "how games run" into just four categories:
Verified: this game fits all the other criteria (like font size, text input, etc.) to be enjoyable on the Deck. (Though looking at the requirements again just now, it technically doesn't specify anything about how well it runs—you could have a game that crashes to desktop every half-hour and it'd still be Verified if it fits the criteria.)
Unsupported: we don't support this game, or it just doesn't run. (You might be able to get it to run, but we won't put effort into making it run.)
Unknown: *collective shrug, we haven't tried it yet*
Playable: everything else. That runs the gamut from "literally flawless performance, but it gives you Playstation controller glyphs" to…well…what we see here.
I think the problem is that those of us familiar with ProtonDB are expecting something like Verified = Platinum, Playable = Gold, and Unsupported = everything else, but it's not a one-to-one translation, and even if it were it'd be more like Unsupported = Borked and Playable = Gold, Silver, and Bronze.
On the one hand, I can see why Valve did it: there's no need to do the incredibly messy task of quantifying how well a game runs. If, hypothetically, they'd introduced an additional "Problematic" category for games that are technically playable, but have problems…well, where would you draw the line? There'd be endless arguments about whether a game was Playable or Problematic no matter what they decided.
On the other hand, we end up in this situation, where if it's been tested (so not Unknown) and isn't Verified, and does actually run, then by default it ends up in the Playable bin, regardless of the actual experience of playing it. It's not a great look, and I think Valve might really have been wise to include a tier for "playable, but it's got serious issues" that they could chuck games like this into. The endless arguments would probably be less problematic than people buying Playable games expecting Gold quality, and getting Bronze. It remains to be seen if Valve will make any changes to the system in light of feedback like this.
Even playing Civ6 recently the launcher would sometimes refuse to even start the game if I'd left it too long, and would instead try to run the steam app that tried to open the launcher again.
TheRiddick Mar 13, 2022
I remember the original Tomb Raider game port (1st in remakes) ran good in benchmark mode and also in initial starting levels but later on had performance and hitching issues to point that it made it non-enjoyable vs playing the proton version (windows) now.
Some games do need launchers like ARMA-3 as it has allot of mods and options that aren't configurable in-game (because engine is limited and old as jank).
It be nice if Steam Verified games had a community voting system attached to them so people whom own the games and run on linux can VOTE/RATE the verified listing with ability to post a comment with vote. This way valve would get a pretty clear picture on if the game needs more testing/fixing or not.....
Last edited by TheRiddick on 13 March 2022 at 9:27 pm UTC
Quoting: Philadelphusbut it's a problem baked in to how Valve collapsed the infinite spectrum of "how games run" into just four categoriesYeah, if only we had a way of expressing a more nuanced description of the issues a game in the playable category has, to provide a bit of context to the glyph. But alas, unless clever scholars come up with a way of transcribing the hurdles Valves testers faced, so they can be related to folks that don't share the same camp fire, I fear we're out of luck.
Quoting: Liam DaweQuoting: toorDamn, seems like you got a terrible UX with it Liam, I've seen many videos of guys playing GTA V on the deck, I wonder if they had the same trouble installing it.The thing I've noticed about many videos of random games running on Deck from certain channels is they didn't show the setup procedure which I'm doing in my various guides on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/GamingOnLinux
Fun fact, but not on deck, GTA V used to work on proton 7 for me, but was updated recently, and then I got this same error of yours, and only experimental allowed me to fix it easily (haven't tried earlier versions)
The thing that concerns me, is how even on set hardware like this we can see such differences between people.
Having a SteamDeck for the past week to play with I have a hard time with these comments. Steam Deck is a PC and no where like a console. If any game works that s a huge positive. Remember this is Linux not Windows so that fact anything or the amount of things that "Do" work and work this well is something to give some praise too. If you have a PC all games wont "just work" so why have the same expectation on The Deck it has a much higher barrier for entry. Also had to comment on the person that said If their favorite game does not work "Steam Deck is a failure" NOT even thinking that other people and other games are being played perfectly fine.
I made sure to have Games I play on Deck and Games I play on My Pc. They don't need to be the same. I love Playing Hades on Deck. I would never play it on My Samsung G9 49inch super ultrawide. SteamDeck is a PC first not a switch console competitor. If this is the mentality you start off with then youre doomed. The Deck is very very flexible and many games can run at over 30 fps on ultra and are super playable. I was surprise smaller tiles like Ascent ran on Ultra quality and looked suuuuper nice. This thing can play soo much and if your game does not work on the current Photon then go to compatibility tab in properties and switch to the Proton version that works best in your game.
It's as simple as adding Startup parameters to a game before launching. And there's Reboot into Desktop mode is literally a KDE desktop for app downloading and apps. You can do this right on the device with no hub attached and there's a Knosole.
Quoting: roger6969Having a SteamDeck for the past week to play with I have a hard time with these comments. Steam Deck is a PC and no where like a console. If any game works that s a huge positive. Remember this is Linux not Windows so that fact anything or the amount of things that "Do" work and work this well is something to give some praise too. If you have a PC all games wont "just work" so why have the same expectation on The Deck it has a much higher barrier for entry.I think you're entirely missing the point here that games for the Deck go through verification, like the title in this article. The expectation is that games that are noted to work, should actually work properly. People can keep saying "it's a PC" all they like, but Valve treat it quite a lot like a console.
Quoting: roger6969I made sure to have Games I play on Deck and Games I play on My Pc. They don't need to be the same. I love Playing Hades on Deck. I would never play it on My Samsung G9 49inch super ultrawide. SteamDeck is a PC first not a switch console competitor. If this is the mentality you start off with then youre doomed. The Deck is very very flexible and many games can run at over 30 fps on ultra and are super playable. I was surprise smaller tiles like Ascent ran on Ultra quality and looked suuuuper nice. This thing can play soo much and if your game does not work on the current Photon then go to compatibility tab in properties and switch to the Proton version that works best in your game.Valve are marketing it very clearly that people should play whatever they like, you shouldn't need to go setting up a special list of games
To quote the Steam Deck website:
"Steam, without compromises"
"Steam Deck runs the latest AAA games-and runs them really well"
You really shouldn't need to ask why there's certain expectations for things to actually run properly.
Quoting: roger6969It's as simple as adding Startup parameters to a game before launching.Desktop mode is an addition, not something that should ever been seen as a necessity to run games on it.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 13 March 2022 at 11:19 pm UTC
Quoting: TheRiddickSome games do need launchers like ARMA-3 as it has allot of mods and options that aren't configurable in-game (because engine is limited and old as jank).
I think Stellaris is another where the launcher is used to choose mods and it kind of makes sense there if it's a limitation of the engine. However, other games allow choosing mods in game so it's unnecessary there.
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