Steam Deck hits 15,000 games rated Playable and Verified

Do you have any issues with the Steam Deck Verified rating on something? Let me know in the comments.

I platinumed Horizon Zero Dawn on the Deck, and it played well and looked amazing on the OLED, but it hung on exit every single time. It definitely detracted from it being a "seamless, comfortable experience." Valve have provided a force-close function, but it would be better if games with the green tick didn't need to use it.

What have you been playing recently that you think is worth mentioning?

A handful of classics via RetroDECK, for my next grab-bag for the "Emulation Recommendations!" thread. Most notably, the always-catchy Bust-A-Groove (PSX), the criminally-unknown Chippoke Ralph no Daibouken: The Adventure of Little Ralph (PSX), and the alien-rescuing Cosmic Ark (Atari 2600).

I've also been playing Saturn Bomberman (Saturn, obviously ) and Super Bomberman R 2 (Proton), and have been continuing to enjoy Stumble Guys (Proton), which I play a little bit of every day. Can't wait to see what next month's crossover event will be!

Do you have any issues with the Steam Deck Verified rating on something?

I've only encountered wonky ratings a few times. Most memorably;

• Hotshot Racing was (and still is) marked as Unsupported but works completely perfectly out-of-the-box.


• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is Verified and immediately gave me all manner of game-breaking issues, ranging from showing question-marks instead of any kind of controller-glyphs, to random crashing, to the game handing over control before the intro had fully finished which caused the level to only partially load its geometry and not load its collision data at all which left Ratchet falling for eternity. It took way too much tweaking of settings to get it running acceptably and stably, and I cannot understand how it was given a Verified rating.

The latter left me finding Super Bomberman R 2's Playable rating to be a little bit galling, since it's perfect out-of-the-box in spite of the default resolution being 1920x1080 and the game not having Steam Deck controller-glyphs.

Animal Well is absolutely fantastic, its a lot of fun. Provided you like puzzles and are a completionist at heart... If so, grab it, it's worth it.

Animal Well is absolutely fantastic, its a lot of fun. Provided you like puzzles and are a completionist at heart... If so, grab it, it's worth it.

I was thinking about picking it up but will wait for better sales on the game.

Also Shadowrun Dragonfall should have the same Playable rating (KB/M controls, no automatic keyboard, and small text; fair enough) as the other two Shadowrun games. They're all similarly great on the Deck.

And the achievements in Kona don't work on the Deck despite the green tick, so that's not "all game functionality."

EA broke support for Apex Legends on the Steam Deck.

EA broke support for Apex Legends on the Steam Deck.

That was fixed only a day later, and then also in Proton Experimental.

I can remember the early days when there was only a handful of native Linux games in Steam. How far we've come.

The only thing that bothers me is that Linux gaming is essentially synonymous with Steam. I was really hoping that other developers would be inspired by Valve to support Linux directly, but it has been left to Valve to do all the heavy lifting, and as much as I appreciate what they have done for Linux gaming, it makes me nervous having all the eggs in one basket, as the saying goes.

I can remember the early days when there was only a handful of native Linux games in Steam. How far we've come.

The only thing that bothers me is that Linux gaming is essentially synonymous with Steam. I was really hoping that other developers would be inspired by Valve to support Linux directly, but it has been left to Valve to do all the heavy lifting, and as much as I appreciate what they have done for Linux gaming, it makes me nervous having all the eggs in one basket, as the saying goes.

Especially because the big motivation for Valve to put resources into Linux - Microsoft has the power to lock games distribution into their own store - affects all the others just as much as it does Valve. Sony, EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar, Epic all want to avoid being beholden to Valve, but they won't avoid being under Microsoft's thumb.

Nintendo Switch 4568
Sony PS5 660 + 3350(PS4)
Microsoft Xbox Series X/S 424 + 2781(Xbox One)

For reference.

edit: I forgot to mention. The games I have been playing are, HellDeivers2, DiabloIV (through battle.net launcher), and Deep Rock Galactic.


Last edited by Highball on 27 May 2024 at 5:18 am UTC

That leads me to the elephant in the room though: anti-cheat. What a pain in the ass it is. Various developers still have not enabled support via Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye including Rust, PUBG, Rainbow Six: Siege, Destiny 2 and more.

I'd love to be this optimistic (they haven't enabled it yet), but several developers on that list have straight up refused to enable support because they believe anti-cheat isn't effective on Linux. For example, Ubisoft, in no uncertain terms, refused to enable support for Linux last week:

We've seen your requests for Rainbow Six Siege to be supported on Linux. Our primary concern is the protection of the players' experience. We want to ensure a safe space for all players. Unfortunately, at the moment, Linux is an open door for cheaters. That being said, rest assured that it is on the R6S team's radar to make Siege available on as many systems as we can in the future.

Which brings me to...

What have you been playing recently that you think is worth mentioning?

I've been booting into Windows to play Rainbow Six: Siege. That's about the only game I've been playing for the past month or so. Although, I did play Left 4 Dead 2 and Deep Rock Galactic with another friend this month for a few hours, and those games were still good fun. I need to remind myself to install the Proton version of Left 4 Dead 2, though, because the native version crashed 5 times.

I haven't even had time to play visual novels lately with all the stuff I've been doing, which brings me to...

The only thing that bothers me is that Linux gaming is essentially synonymous with Steam. I was really hoping that other developers would be inspired by Valve to support Linux directly, but it has been left to Valve to do all the heavy lifting, and as much as I appreciate what they have done for Linux gaming, it makes me nervous having all the eggs in one basket, as the saying goes.

I can understand the sentiment. On the other hand, Valve has done nothing for over 90% of the Japanese visual novels not available on Steam. I can't get support from Valve or the developer for those games. And those games are the ones I play the most, in a normal month. I still need to coax many of these games into playing with Winetricks. So, nothing much has changed for me.

Nonetheless, it would be great for everybody if more big developers took the plunge even with something basic, like testing the game with Proton before pushing every update out so they don't end up on GOL with a headline like, "[GAME] is broken on Proton again with the new update". Support from the developer is rarely great even for native ports, though, so nothing much has changed there...

Anti-cheat should be supported on the Steam Deck, but on the other hand, most of these games are unfit for the handheld form factor and as proof of that, it doesn't seem to impact the Steam Deck sales. It is sad for Linux desktops, though.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 27 May 2024 at 12:31 am UTC

What have you been playing recently that you think is worth mentioning?

A handful of classics via RetroDECK, for my next grab-bag for the "Emulation Recommendations!" thread. Most notably, the always-catchy Bust-A-Groove (PSX), the criminally-unknown Chippoke Ralph no Daibouken: The Adventure of Little Ralph (PSX), and the alien-rescuing Cosmic Ark (Atari 2600).

I've also been playing Saturn Bomberman (Saturn, obviously ) and Super Bomberman R 2 (Proton), and have been continuing to enjoy Stumble Guys (Proton), which I play a little bit of every day. Can't wait to see what next month's crossover event will be!

Do you have any issues with the Steam Deck Verified rating on something?

I've only encountered wonky ratings a few times. Most memorably;

• Hotshot Racing was (and still is) marked as Unsupported but works completely perfectly out-of-the-box.


• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is Verified and immediately gave me all manner of game-breaking issues, ranging from showing question-marks instead of any kind of controller-glyphs, to random crashing, to the game handing over control before the intro had fully finished which caused the level to only partially load its geometry and not load its collision data at all which left Ratchet falling for eternity. It took way too much tweaking of settings to get it running acceptably and stably, and I cannot understand how it was given a Verified rating.

The latter left me finding Super Bomberman R 2's Playable rating to be a little bit galling, since it's perfect out-of-the-box in spite of the default resolution being 1920x1080 and the game not having Steam Deck controller-glyphs.

Hotshot Racing is probably the worst game to get.

I can remember the early days when there was only a handful of native Linux games in Steam. How far we've come.

The only thing that bothers me is that Linux gaming is essentially synonymous with Steam. I was really hoping that other developers would be inspired by Valve to support Linux directly, but it has been left to Valve to do all the heavy lifting, and as much as I appreciate what they have done for Linux gaming, it makes me nervous having all the eggs in one basket, as the saying goes.

That's the reason why we need to promote the Steam deck to regular gamers or PC users. By doing so, we can boost our market share and attract more developers to create programs for Linux.

Hotshot Racing is probably the worst game to get.

I got it as a freebie from Fanatical a year or two ago. Still, why so?

Anti-cheat should be supported on the Steam Deck, but on the other hand, most of these games are unfit for the handheld form factor and as proof of that, it doesn't seem to impact the Steam Deck sales. It is sad for Linux desktops, though.

Anti-cheat is supported on the Steam Deck but many game companies want to use their tools that are kernel based, which doesn't work on Linux. Steam Deck support EAC and BattlEye anti-cheat software but not every game company uses it though.

Anti-cheat should be supported on the Steam Deck, but on the other hand, most of these games are unfit for the handheld form factor and as proof of that, it doesn't seem to impact the Steam Deck sales. It is sad for Linux desktops, though.

Anti-cheat is supported on the Steam Deck but many game companies want to use their tools that are kernel based, which doesn't work on Linux. Steam Deck support EAC and BattlEye anti-cheat software but not every game company uses it though.

I already know this. I wasn't into the details of how it was or should be supported. They should enable ac proton support. That's what I meant. Sorry if it wasn't clear enough.

Anti-cheat should be supported on the Steam Deck, but on the other hand, most of these games are unfit for the handheld form factor and as proof of that, it doesn't seem to impact the Steam Deck sales. It is sad for Linux desktops, though.

Anti-cheat is supported on the Steam Deck but many game companies want to use their tools that are kernel based, which doesn't work on Linux. Steam Deck support EAC and BattlEye anti-cheat software but not every game company uses it though.

I already know this. I wasn't into the details of how it was or should be supported. They should enable ac proton support. That's what I meant. Sorry if it wasn't clear enough.

Ah, I see. I wasn't sure what you meant before but make sense now.

What have you been playing recently that you think is worth mentioning? Do you have any issues with the Steam Deck Verified rating on something? Let me know in the comments.

I recently played Borderlands 2 on Steam Deck and it crashed constantly with every Proton version I tried, it's supposed to be verified.

Besides that, I've been playing Dave the diver on Steam Deck like a mad person, what a wonderful game.
And on my desktop I've been testing LSFG 2.0 with emulators and games capped at 60fps like Dark Souls Remastered and it works like a charm now that it has VRR support and way less artifacts.

What have you been playing recently that you think is worth mentioning? Do you have any issues with the Steam Deck Verified rating on something? Let me know in the comments.

I recently played Borderlands 2 on Steam Deck and it crashed constantly with every Proton version I tried, it's supposed to be verified.

Shouldn't Borderlands 2 be running natively?