Valve's popular Linux-powered gaming handheld the Steam Deck has hit a new milestone, with 15,000 games now rated either Playable or Verified. And it continues to sell well. Valve only hit 14,000 back in early March and 13,000 back in January.
For lots more Steam Deck news be sure to follow our dedicated Steam Deck tag, it even has its own RSS feed.
The important thing to remember is that Deck Verified only includes what Valve have put through testing. Games not yet tested can still be played, you can try to play anything. Additionally, there are times the rating is wrong, like Unsupported games actually being fine or Verified games having poor performance (but we're talking a tiny percentage wrong here).
Here's the current numbers of games rated by Valve
- Verified: 4,898
- Playable: 10,102
- Unsupported: 4,033
Some recently Steam Deck Verified games that look great include:
- ANIMAL WELL
- Nocturnal: Enhanced Edition
- Planetiles
- Saviorless
- The Witch's Cauldron
- Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
- Wizard with a Gun
Pictured - Saviorless, Credit: Empty Head Games
Random shout-out to Forest Fortress (NSFW) as becoming number 15,000 in the list. Bet Valve love testing all those games huh?
There's certainly no shortage of truly excellent games for the Steam Deck. There's more supported games than any one person can play, which is a pretty good place to be for a platform overall. You can see the proper numbers on SteamDB, since that includes delisted games you can still play if you own them (which Valve still verify).
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. And recently we've had EA expand their own EA anticheat breaking multiple games which is not looking good for their future titles on Steam Deck and Linux desktop. Hopefully Valve will eventually be in a position to do something about all that.
Additionally, while we don't get sales numbers from Valve on anything, we can see overall the Steam Deck has been selling well. Especially since the release of the Steam Deck OLED. Looking at the global top sellers, the Steam Deck constantly ranks quite high. While the Steam Deck is much more costly compared to regular games, remember those top games sell often tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and more constantly. So it's clear Valve are shifting plenty of units.
Here's how it's doing on sales position over time:
The data, click to expand
| Week Beginning | Global Position |
| May 14, 2024 | 3 |
| May 7, 2024 | 4 |
| April 30, 2024 | 5 |
| April 23, 2024 | 3 |
| April 16, 2024 | 3 |
| April 9, 2024 | 4 |
| April 2, 2024 | 3 |
| March 26. 2024 | 5 |
| March 19, 2024 | 4 |
| March 12, 2024 | 4 |
| March 5, 2024 | 3 |
| February 27, 2024 | 3 |
| February 20, 2024 | 6 |
| February 13, 2024 | 5 |
| February 6, 2024 | 8 |
| January 30, 2024 | 6 |
| January 23, 2024 | 5 |
| January 16, 2024 | 2 |
| January 9, 2024 | 2 |
| January 2, 2024 | 1 |
| December 26, 2023 | 2 |
| December 19, 2023 | 2 |
| December 12, 2023 | 1 |
| December 5, 2023 | 1 |
| November 28, 2023 | 1 |
| November 21, 2023 | 1 |
| November 14, 2023 | 1 |
| November 7, 2023 | 4 |
| October 31, 2023 | 9 |
| October 24, 2023 | 11 |
| October 17, 2023 | 11 |
| October 10, 2023 | 13 |
| October 3, 2023 | 14 |
| September 26, 2023 | 11 |
| September 19, 2023 | 5 |
| September 12, 2023 | 2 |
| September 5, 2023 | 8 |
| August 29, 2023 | 6 |
| August 22, 2023 | 7 |
| August 15, 2023 | 8 |
| August 8, 2023 | 6 |
| August 1, 2023 | 6 |
| July 25, 2023 | 5 |
| July 18, 2023 | 8 |
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.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
pleasereadthemanual May 27
QuoteThat 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:
QuoteWe'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...
QuoteWhat 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...
Quoting: Mountain ManThe 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...
Mohandevir May 27
Last edited by Mohandevir on 27 May 2024 at 12:31 am UTC
Quoting: PenglingQuoteWhat 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!
QuoteDo 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.
Quoting: Mountain ManI 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.
Quoting: jams3223Hotshot Racing is probably the worst game to get.I got it as a freebie from Fanatical a year or two ago.
Still, why so?
Quoting: MohandevirAnti-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.
Mohandevir May 27
Quoting: ToddLQuoting: MohandevirAnti-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.
Quoting: MohandevirQuoting: ToddLQuoting: MohandevirAnti-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.
QuoteWhat 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.
Quoting: EriQuoteWhat 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?
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