Really great to see bigger developers actually start to properly take note of the Steam Deck since it's selling so well. Now we have The Elder Scrolls Online from ZeniMax Online Studios and Bethesda Softworks getting improvements.
The thing is, the game has actually been playable as far back as June 2022. However, you did need to some adjustments to get it to work that I detailed but it seems this is no longer required. Thanks to this, Valve have now bumped it up to a Steam Deck Playable rating while using Proton 9.0-2.
In their own announcement on this update the developers noted:
We are thrilled to announce that The Elder Scrolls Online now has “Playable” status on the Steam Deck. This means that Steam ESO players can now venture into Tamriel’s Second Era using the portable PC gaming device. Never miss a Daily Login Reward again!
If you play on Steam and have a Steam Deck, simply find the game in your Library to begin the download. Note that while the game is now officially “Playable,” it won’t have full “Verified” status until a future update, meaning you might encounter some unexpected UI issues.
Going by their wording towards the end above, they plan to improve it further to get it Steam Deck Verified in future.
You can play ESO from Steam.
is it any good?
Yeah it does play good. The only 'issue' which I had with the steam version of the game in the latest patches is that the launcher will cause stutter issues when it has a graphical update even if it's in the background. Simply closing it will resolve all issues.
I'm currently running the Heroic version of it (so that my GF can play Elden Ring when I'm playing ESO) and the launcher self-closes, so I've never had that issue at all there.
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