43 of the Top 50 most highly-reviewed Steam games are Steam Deck Playable

Hi, while this is quite interesting, perhaps for the next lists we could also add a column for their ProtonDB rating? As someone who can't purchase the Deck, it would still be nice to keep track a comparison of the Deck Verification ratings and the ProtonDB ratings.

Hi, while this is quite interesting, perhaps for the next lists we could also add a column for their ProtonDB rating? As someone who can't purchase the Deck, it would still be nice to keep track a comparison of the Deck Verification ratings and the ProtonDB ratings.

On it. Edit: done.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 12 July 2022 at 11:07 am UTC

It's interesting that of the Unchecked, two are Gold on ProtonDB and two are native. So presumably it wouldn't take much for all four of those to become Playable.
That leaves only the three Unsupported as definitely not workable on the Deck--but note that even that doesn't mean they don't work on Linux period, since all three of those Unsupported are actually Linux native. Presumably their Unsupported category is about specifically Deck-related issues, not Linux-related issues. I'd say that's particularly clear for Alyx, eh?

Bottom line: While only 43/50 of those titles are currently "Playable" or better on the Steam Deck, already a pretty dashed good figure, all 50 can be played on Linux. That's amazing.

Incidentally, 25 of them, exactly half, are Native, not even counting Tomb Raider. We get more native titles than some people think we do.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 12 July 2022 at 4:05 pm UTC

Thank you for another helpful and informative overview!

I'm a little bit astonished that there are that many native titles among these Top 50 - nice!

On a side note: I own way too many of these. :D

Why is OneShot native but unsupported?

It's interesting that of the Unchecked, two are Gold on ProtonDB and two are native. So presumably it wouldn't take much for all four of those to become Playable.
That leaves only the three Unsupported as definitely not workable on the Deck--but note that even that doesn't mean they don't work on Linux period, since all three of those Unsupported are actually Linux native. Presumably their Unsupported category is about specifically Deck-related issues, not Linux-related issues. I'd say that's particularly clear for Alyx, eh?

Bottom line: While only 43/50 of those titles are currently "Playable" or better on the Steam Deck, already a pretty dashed good figure, all 50 can be played on Linux. That's amazing.

Incidentally, 25 of them, exactly half, are Native, not even counting Tomb Raider. We get more native titles than some people think we do.

For sure there is a nice number of native games out there. What saddens me is the occasional one that works fine / better native, but defaults to Proton on the Steam Deck.

I do find it amusing that Half-Life: Alyx is on that list. It does, by the way, work flawlessly natively. Played through the entire game with no hiccups on a 2080RTX + Index. while I'm not sure the game is worth all the money you have to sink into a system, if you already have it... it is VERY cool. I should play more VR...

Why is OneShot native but unsupported?

Don't know about that particular game, but there are reasons other than Linux support why a game doesn't work on the Deck. Not all games can be played well on a screen that small, and not all offer controller support, just to name two of the more common ones. I am actually quite a bit surprised that so many of these 50 games work well on a device they weren't designed for. That's pretty amazing.

I do find it amusing that Half-Life: Alyx is on that list. It does, by the way, work flawlessly natively. Played through the entire game with no hiccups on a 2080RTX + Index.

Your rig has the capacity to do VR. The Steam Deck does not. Hence all VR titles are "Unsupported" across the board by the Deck Verified process.

I do find it amusing that Half-Life: Alyx is on that list. It does, by the way, work flawlessly natively. Played through the entire game with no hiccups on a 2080RTX + Index.

Your rig has the capacity to do VR. The Steam Deck does not. Hence all VR titles are "Unsupported" across the board by the Deck Verified process.

Correct, my point was that these are on the top 50! Makes one curious about the install base of VR at this point.

This talk of VR makes me curious. It would make a great Linux video to learn if someone using a dGPU over USB could theoretically run VR.

Obviously the software stack is fine for it.

It's silly and a ridiculous use-case that would never be practical in its current iteration but I do wonder.


In summary, as the list points out, there's certainly no shortage of things to play, I already have hundreds of games ready to play and they've all performed above my expectations. The resolution is perfect, I probably wouldn't notice much if it got boosted. The ergonomics of the SteamDeck are great, I hold it in one hand sideways just fine without fear of it slipping out of my hand. Controls and buttons are adequately large for adult hands. It literally has a Desktop (which will be great if this world-electric-shortage issue continues [which it will]).

All in all SD is a dream, not flawless, but still a dream. The only problem I had was last night the Internet had connectivity issues -- and I couldn't start the Steam Deck without internet as it got stuck in a "Checking for updates" screen.

I think Steam Deck & all content should be ready to play offline in the event there is no internet (which typically I think is the case, except I think it had just finished applying the update).

I also forsee potential times when internet outages may be happening, and hope the community can get together one of those "Offline Steam DLL" patches or whatever that allow existing content to be played offline.

We payed good money for our libraries, and if there is intermittent internet that's no good reason to not be able to play our purchases.

This talk of VR makes me curious. It would make a great Linux video to learn if someone using a dGPU over USB could theoretically run VR.

Obviously the software stack is fine for it.

Here is where things get tricky/annoying...

I believe (not sure if this is the exact reason) that AMD doesn't have a license to use Thunderbolt, which is why it's so rare to find an AMD based system with TB. If the Steam Deck had a TB3/4 port on it, using a external GPU would definitely be an option. Not only that we could get a very cool dock that'd boost it's power in a similar fashion to how the Switch actually works.

Now step into bizzarro land; people have connected nvidia cards to the Atari VCS via a pcie -> NVME/SATA bridge. Something similar should be possible on the Steam Deck.

Why is OneShot native but unsupported?

On ProtonDB is mentioned problem with bundled library librt.so.1. Solution is easy, you just need remove it, so game is forced to use one from system. I thing this is probable reason for unsuported.

This talk of VR makes me curious. It would make a great Linux video to learn if someone using a dGPU over USB could theoretically run VR.

Obviously the software stack is fine for it.

Here is where things get tricky/annoying...

I believe (not sure if this is the exact reason) that AMD doesn't have a license to use Thunderbolt, which is why it's so rare to find an AMD based system with TB. If the Steam Deck had a TB3/4 port on it, using a external GPU would definitely be an option. Not only that we could get a very cool dock that'd boost it's power in a similar fashion to how the Switch actually works.

Now step into bizzarro land; people have connected nvidia cards to the Atari VCS via a pcie -> NVME/SATA bridge. Something similar should be possible on the Steam Deck.

Well thunderbolt doesn't mean much anymore with USB4 coming on devices now as a few AMD laptops with USB4 now and eGPUs work on them now and a bunch of thunderbolt devices. at some point USB4 will come to AMD's other devices so maybe a future deck will have it also.

This talk of VR makes me curious. It would make a great Linux video to learn if someone using a dGPU over USB could theoretically run VR.

Obviously the software stack is fine for it.

Here is where things get tricky/annoying...

I believe (not sure if this is the exact reason) that AMD doesn't have a license to use Thunderbolt, which is why it's so rare to find an AMD based system with TB. If the Steam Deck had a TB3/4 port on it, using a external GPU would definitely be an option. Not only that we could get a very cool dock that'd boost it's power in a similar fashion to how the Switch actually works.

Now step into bizzarro land; people have connected nvidia cards to the Atari VCS via a pcie -> NVME/SATA bridge. Something similar should be possible on the Steam Deck.

Well thunderbolt doesn't mean much anymore with USB4 coming on devices now as a few AMD laptops with USB4 now and eGPUs work on them now and a bunch of thunderbolt devices. at some point USB4 will come to AMD's other devices so maybe a future deck will have it also.

Unless they make them compatible 100%, which knowing the USB consortium, they will not, then they'll still matter for the next few years. I'm convinced at this point it's just so they can continually make everyone throw out their peripherals and force people to buy the new ones. Then again, those who don't throw them out will make tons of money on eBay when people 30 years from now want a 'retro' system, because cables are cool! (I'm guessing in 30 yeras everything will be wireless. At least one would hope so).

https://www.tomsguide.com/features/thunderbolt-4-vs-usb4-whats-the-difference

Kind of sounds to me that overall TB4 have higher minimum requirements, supports dual monitors, and is also currently in far more use.

Ugh, this annoyance should stop. It is even worse than everyone using USB-c except Apple, because at least those ports looked different. Unless the cables were wired the same between the two... is everyone going to have a drawer full of USB-C cables to have to sort through to find which are rated for which port...

Even if that isn't the case, it is another AMD vs Intel fight we don't need or want...


Last edited by slaapliedje on 12 July 2022 at 11:38 pm UTC

Why is OneShot native but unsupported?

With just having played a little bit of that game I can tell it's that type of game that have you interact with the gamefiles and other stuff like using your login name to 4th wall breaking talking to you and stuff.

So it basically needs a full deskop environment as part of it's gameplay. Which doesn't work in the deck UI. It will work just fine in desktop mode.

Hi, while this is quite interesting, perhaps for the next lists we could also add a column for their ProtonDB rating? As someone who can't purchase the Deck, it would still be nice to keep track a comparison of the Deck Verification ratings and the ProtonDB ratings.

On it. Edit: done.

Thank you! That's actually pretty illuminating. Only Alyx is Silver, and that's a VR game (even if it has Native release) so that's not a surprise. A few "Playable" also have "Platinum" rating which is interesting - I'm not sure what Deep Rock can do about its texts, but DDLC I'm pretty sure could be tweaked to have an in-game keyboard if the creator is motivated enough (assuming he doesn't just support auto-invoke On-Screen Keyboard) and Tomb Rider is more of a 'willingness' issue with Launchers and stuff.

It's quite interesting to see that all of them has very good Proton ratings, and generally pretty good Deck ratings. I suppose if they're the type to get high ratings, they're also the type to listen to player requests and thus more likely to pay some attention to Linux support.

This talk of VR makes me curious. It would make a great Linux video to learn if someone using a dGPU over USB could theoretically run VR.

Obviously the software stack is fine for it.

It's silly and a ridiculous use-case that would never be practical in its current iteration but I do wonder.

That would require TB3/4 or USB4, which have PCIe access. Unfortunately, the SD only has USB 3.2 which lacks such a connection. The only way to use an eGPU on the SD would be via an M.2 adapter, which you can find videos of people testing on YouTube. The problem with this is that it requires opening up the SD, and removing the SSD. So not only is it not convenient, you have to get an OS installed into a MicroSD card or USB drive. Not a practical solution for most use cases.

This talk of VR makes me curious. It would make a great Linux video to learn if someone using a dGPU over USB could theoretically run VR.

Obviously the software stack is fine for it.

It's silly and a ridiculous use-case that would never be practical in its current iteration but I do wonder.

That would require TB3/4 or USB4, which have PCIe access. Unfortunately, the SD only has USB 3.2 which lacks such a connection. The only way to use an eGPU on the SD would be via an M.2 adapter, which you can find videos of people testing on YouTube. The problem with this is that it requires opening up the SD, and removing the SSD. So not only is it not convenient, you have to get an OS installed into a MicroSD card or USB drive. Not a practical solution for most use cases.

I mean you'd still be strapping a graphics card and then the VR headset to it, so of course it's not practical. Just like buying 40 year old hardware to play games that can easily be covered via FPGA or Emulation... but where's the 'fun' in that?? :)