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.
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
There appears an active thread about it in Steam https://steamcommunity.com/app/3240220/discussions/0/592890322147654153/
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.
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.
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)
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.
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