While we’re still a few months from ordering the Steam Deck, Valve has announced a new program for Steam called Deck Verified.
Basically, Valve is currently reviewing the entire Steam catalogue and seeing how well it runs on the Steam Deck.
After a game has been reviewed by Valve in the Deck Verified program, they’ll be put into one of four categories:
Verified means the game runs great on the Deck out of the box. Verified games for Steam Deck will have four checkboxes enabled, Input, Display, Seamlessness and System Support.
Input shows that the game has full controller support, uses the appropriate controller input icons and will bring up the on-screen keyboard when necessary.
Display means the game supports a resolution of 1280×800 or 1280×720 as default and text are legible on the Deck’s screen.
Seamlessness is another way of saying that there should be now compatibility warnings etc.
System Support means that the game and its middleware should be supported by Valve’s Proton system.
Playable indicates that there may be some tweaking required (such as needing to use community controller config, needing to use the touchscreen to navigate a launcher) to play the game on the Deck.
Unsupported means that the game is not playable at all on Steam Deck.
Then finally, Unknown means that Valve hasn’t reviewed the game for Steam Deck compatibility.
All these icons for the Deck Verified program will be viewable on your Steam Library and Store on Deck.
Valve will soon be adding an option to check the compatibility category of each of the games ahead of the Deck’s launch.
The Valve Steam Deck is scheduled to start shipping in December 2021 and into 2022.
