God of War Ragnarök released and Steam Deck Verified, needs a launch option for Desktop Linux

God of War Ragnarök from Santa Monica Studio, Jetpack Interactive and PlayStation Publishing LLC has released on PC today and Valve put it quickly through verification for Steam Deck.

While writing this article it was initially only noted via SteamDB, but checking back before publishing and the status is now live on the Steam page too. So it's fully Steam Deck Verified with Proton 9.0-3 that was also released recently. Once again, Valve and their coders doing some amazing work to get AAA games working at release on Linux platforms like Steam Deck and desktops.

The game does require a PlayStation Network Account, so some regions will be unable to buy or play it. People were worried that the PlayStation Overlay, which is used in Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR'S CUT and causes the online mode not to work, would be forced here again but it seems that's not the case.

However, this seems due to the developers putting in a hook to detect the Steam Deck, and simply not use the overlay if so. What this means is that for Desktop Linux players, you'll need to add this Steam launch option to pretend it's a Steam Deck to get it work:

SteamDeck=1 %command%

You can add this via right clicking on the game -> properties -> add it into the Launch Options text box.

This appears to come with some mouse issues though, so you'll need a gamepad for now, as mentioned in comments on the Proton GitHub ticket for it. You also might need to link your PlayStation and Steam accounts first to get it to work.

I'll admit, this one snuck-up on me and I forgot it was coming today, so I've not had a chance to take a look. I really hope though, that it runs better than the previous God of War game that had frequent Steam Deck lock-up crashes while also being Steam Deck Verified.

You can buy it from:

Fanatical

Humble Store

Steam