Dauntless from Phoenix Labs has finally launched on Steam, it's also free to play so you can go and check out this monster-hunting game without spending a penny.
The developers mentioned on Steam clearly back in late November: "We have no intentions to intentionally block Steam Deck compatibility!", and it has launched with Easy Anti-Cheat. There's no official Steam Deck compatibility rating from Valve just yet though, and the developer hasn't officially noted any supported status for Steam Deck apart from that quote so far.
Direct Link
Giving it a test-run myself on Steam Deck with Proton 9.0-3, the game does launch correctly and shows Easy Anti-Cheat initializing. The game requires an Epic Games Account, which I had already previously linked with Steam for a different game, so I just had to use the touch screen to allow the game to be linked to it and after that gamepad input then worked correctly.
So it seems at launch, at least right now, it does indeed work on Steam Deck. Sticking it into Low overall details and the performance looked pretty good too above 50FPS. Not quite keeping 60FPS, but still pretty good, a few dips down into the 40s during heavy combat.
One odd issue I have encountered, is that some display modes cause the resolution on the menu to be quite broken. Keeping it in Borderless Window works fine. Apart from that, it all appears to work pretty well, running around the city and engaging in a few battles with other players.
Dauntless has a text scaling option too, which I set to larger so it's easier to read although there's still a couple of places with really small text.
I also tested it on Desktop Linux (Kubuntu 24.10) but here across both Proton 9.0-3 and Proton Experimental Easy Ant-Cheat gives me a "Client game integrity violation error". A workaround, at least for now, is to pretend your desktop is a Steam Deck with this launch option:
SteamDeck=1 %command%
The official word I got back from their press team over email today is that "the Dauntless anti-cheat is Steam Deck compatible and they’ll be making further improvements to Steam Deck functionality".
Don't forget to keep an eye on our anti-cheat compatibility page for updates on all games for Linux / Steam Deck. Any feedback on that page goes to the forum.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
We have no intentions to intentionally block Steam Deck compatibility!
How nice would it be if the other multiplayer devs were like this. I don't want explicit "support", just don't deliberately block Steam Deck/Linux and we'd be good.
hardpenguin Dec 6
The official word I got back from their press team over email today is that "the Dauntless anti-cheat is Steam Deck compatible and they’ll be making further improvements to Steam Deck functionality".
I'm glad the workaround is simple enough for now but one of my worries esp. for anticheats going forward is that they will become more tightly coupled with the Deck itself or SteamOS; I like my Deck but I definitely don't want to play everything on it.
It should be noted that they haven't added blockchain or NFT stuff to the game (yet!), but it does go a long way to explaining the reported extreme shift towards monetization and gutting core features.
I believe them when they say they didn't mean to break Steam Deck compatibility. They likely just don't have anybody left who knows how to maintain it.
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