While Palworld enjoys a resurgence Valve dropped the rating to Steam Deck Unsupported

Palworld is enjoying a nice resurgence after the release of the Feybreak major update with a huge increase in players. Going from around a regular 45,000 players online to around 200,000 concurrent players. However, Valve have dropped the rating the Steam Deck Unsupported.

It's not exactly clear why. Previously it was Steam Deck Playable up until yesterday (January 1st, 2025), when Valve suddenly dropped it down to Steam Deck Unsupported.

Checking back on a fresh download, with Proton 9.0-4 which is the latest stable release, and the game does still appear to run without any clear technical problems on my Steam Deck LCD. Performance on the lowest settings also still seems to be okay, at least in my old save with a low-level base. Joining an online server also worked fine.

Pictured - Palworld

It would nice if at some point this year Valve updated the Deck Verified system to give a clearer reason on why a game has an Unsupported rating. Perhaps their testing found something specific that breaks at some point on Steam Deck, but we can only guess for now.

Especially odd for this one, since it's a most-played game on Steam Deck, it even has a special banner to show this on the Steam page. It was actually one of the most played Steam Deck games across the whole of 2024. As of the current numbers (Jan 4, 2024 - Jan 2, 2025), Palworld is the 5th most popular on Steam Deck (27th over the last month).