Every article tag can be clicked to get a list of all articles in that category. Every article tag also has an RSS feed! You can customize an RSS feed too!
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

Surprisingly, Valve rated Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced and Rainbow Six Siege as Steam Deck Playable

By -
Last updated: 18 Mar 2025 at 2:28 pm UTC

Even though both of them have anti-cheat that blocks Linux platforms from playing online, Valve have suddenly rated both Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced (and so GTA Online) and Rainbow Six Siege as Steam Deck Playable.

Many people have had issues with how Valve rate various games on Steam Deck, with a few outliers showing up as Verified when they don't perform well or Unsupported when they actually work fine. With the Steam Deck recently hitting 18,000 games playable / verified, Valve really need to ensure the system is working well to not give the wrong idea.

The new ratings now appear on the store pages for both games, which you can also see via SteamDB (GTAV / R6 Siege) showing testing was done and published.


Pictured: Steam store page rating for Rainbow Six Siege


Pictured: Steam store page rating for Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced

And since the ratings are live on Steam, they then show as compatible when looking directly on Steam Deck too.


Pictured - how Rainbow Six Siege appears on my Steam Deck

We know that Rockstar themselves intentionally blocked GTA Online for GTA V when they added in BattlEye. As they say clearly it's simply not supported on Steam Deck. Although single-player works, a Playable rating is very misleading.

For Rainbow Six Siege it has been blocked the entire time, although they did just launch a new update with additional anti-cheat measures.

Trying out Rainbow Six Siege on Desktop Linux and it clearly does not work when trying to join a match, getting kicked pretty rapidly before the game properly begins.


Pictured - getting kicked from Rainbow Six Siege on Desktop Linux

Trying to reconnect after this also does not work.

I then had to wait an hour before being able to test on Steam Deck, since it counted me as a leaver and locked me out. Same issue on Steam Deck though, it simply doesn't work. The live Playable rating from Valve is wrong.


Pictured - getting kicked from Rainbow Six Siege on Steam Deck

Thankfully, Valve do have their two hour play time and two weeks refund period, but still — issues like this are not the best look for ongoing trust in Valve's Steam Deck verification system. Ideally, Valve should have some sort of manual rating lock on games that have these kinds of anti-cheat blockers, so they can't mistakenly get a rating that leads to player confusion. That way, if there's a legitimate change, Valve can get it checked properly first.

Especially important if Valve are going to continue with new Steam hardware based on Linux, as Valve did say "The future of hardware at Valve is bright" and noted 330 million hours were played on Steam Deck in 2024 so this trust in their system is vital.

I've reached out to Valve press about this and will update if any reply is received.

Want some games that do work well? Check out my list of must-have Steam Deck games under £10 in the Steam Spring Sale 2025.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
5 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky.
See more from me
You can also find comments for this article on social media: Mastodon
All posts need to follow our rules. For users logged in: please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Guest readers can email us for any issues.
11 comments Subscribe

Stella 10 hours ago
  • Supporter Plus
The Verified system desperately needs a big overhaul. It is completely unclear how they arrive at one of 3 categories, they should publish some guidelines on what 'Verified' means exactly and what a game needs to support to get it. And then stick to those guidelines, because right now it's just one big mess.

Right now the rating is extremely inconsistent, and this leads to issues like games using the same engine and performing basically the same (like Horizon Zero Dawn Remaster & Horizon Forbidden West) to getting different ratings. One is verified, the other is Unsupported. This should not be able to happen!

They should also be adding more information to the test results, but at minimum the date it was tested, and the used Proton version. Proton gets better all the time and this system clearly does not reflect that at all. So many games are 'Unsupported' despite working fine, and this would at least draw attention to the fact that the test results are old.

Then, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD add more reasoning to why a game is 'Unsupported'. Mostly they just say 'Valve is still working on adding support for this' which is absolutely 0 information that is helpful in any way. As a customer I want to know what doesnt work, so I can decide on a purchase and whether I will enjoy it despite being Unsupported.

Then if the rating changes because of anticheat being added/changed or something else that breaks the game in a significant way on Linux, it should be a guaranteed refund no questions asked.

These issues really need to be solved before bringing SteamOS to more devices.

*end of rant*


Last edited by Stella on 18 Mar 2025 at 11:55 am UTC
dziadulewicz 9 hours ago
So AFAIK Rockstar could just enable BattlEye for Linux and we'd game GTA V in online mode.

There appears an active thread about it in Steam https://steamcommunity.com/app/3240220/discussions/0/592890322147654153/
Pyrate 9 hours ago
Don't give me hope.
minidou 9 hours ago
So AFAIK Rockstar could just enable BattlEye for Linux and we'd game GTA V in online mode.

The issue is the same for Apex and others. They consider it helps cheat makers because Linux is not closed enough to their taste. So they disable Linux machines entirely.
LinuxForEveryone 9 hours ago
If GTA Online is part of of GTA V Enhanced -- which it is -- this is nothing short of false and misleading advertising.
dmacofalltrades 7 hours ago
Marking GTA V as playable kind of makes sense; single player works perfectly there. But afaik Siege doesn't have any offline/single-player component - is there a bot mode? - so marking that as playable does feel misleading.

It would be helpful if they at least added a note that multiplayer will not work if they're gonna mark games like these as playable.
Liam Dawe 6 hours ago
  • Admin
I think people really need a refresher on the ratings purpose. No, it doesn't make sense to mark a game Playable when a major feature of the game cannot be played at all.

The ratings are fine, if used consistently.

  • Verified: literally everything works

  • Playable: you can finish it, it's playable, but there's some minor issues

  • Unsupported: major problems (like no online play)
Klaas 6 hours ago
Perhaps the official meaning of the ratings has changed… if the messages of the parts that make up playable status are to be interpreted literally, all functionality that works without a controller has to work with a controller. That is the case – not working without a controller and also not working with a controller.
razze 5 hours ago
  • Supporter Plus
Wondering, if they know more then we do, just fat fingered the deadline...
CatKiller 2 hours ago
  • Supporter Plus
It is completely unclear how they arrive at one of 3 categories, they should publish some guidelines on what 'Verified' means exactly and what a game needs to support to get it.


FWIW, they have.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/compat#DeckCompatibilityChecklist

And then stick to those guidelines, because right now it's just one big mess.

Yep, that's the rub.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
Login / Register