Curious how people view the steam deck and if most/all their games are supported?
I have over 1,000 games on Steam and I’ve yet to run into any game that doesn’t just work, outside of a very limited few online games, which I wouldn’t really want to be playing on the Steam Deck anyway since those games are generally played on mouse and keyboard. And VR games, but that should be a given lol.
The Steam Deck is a great piece of hardware, I use it as a regular computer for recording audiobooks, I used it for gaming and it’s been stellar
The funny thing is that we started buying MORE games after getting it and filtering steam for the ones that work best.
It completely replaced the Nintendo Switch as our party platform, we have been adding piles of local multi player games to it and using multiple Xbox controllers with it docked around the main TV most of the time.
I think when it comes to how many titles work it is going to depend on your gaming preferences. If you play a lot of EA games or Ubisoft games it is clunky to get their store loaders going sometimes or at a min you get prompted to sign in via onscreen keyboard which is a PITA sometimes and there is lower support.
Steam native games however are great.
The only things I’ve found that just straight up don’t work on the deck are things with draconian anti-cheat (which don’t work on Linux in general, not just the deck), and very old titles that have weirdly restrictive resolutions or control schemes or whathaveyou. Some games require some tweaking (mostly around controls, occasionally changing the Proton version, which is very easy to do within Steam), but generally that’s been minor. The things that don’t work well are typically things you wouldn’t expect to work anyway.
It’s worth noting that it makes it very easy to remap controls, even for games that don’t natively support controllers or don’t let you remap the controls at all normally. You can also invoke an onscreen keyboard as needed (for e.g. typing names). The controller mapping is very strong; it’s not limited only to single buttons; you can create custom contextual radial menus, for instance, so even games that need many more unique controls than the Deck has buttons work fine with some tweaking. You can also view / download / rate other users’ control mappings for any game that has them, so you don’t even need to do the work yourself.
It’s a fantastic piece of hardware for gaming. Looks great, feels great. It’s a bit large (won’t fit in a pocket, obviously), but that shouldn’t be a problem for anyone who would reasonably want a handheld gaming PC. It’s not a phone or a Gameboy.
I was without a desktop PC for a week or so due to a hardware failure, and was able to do everything I needed to do on the Steam Deck (with a USB mouse/keyboard, plugged into a monitor via a dock). So it’s a great piece of hardware even for that.
and very old titles that have weirdly restrictive resolutions or control schemes or whathaveyou.
This is correct, but as an addendum, for a lot of very old games (that don’t fall into that previous category), it’s usually easier to get them working under Linux than it is under Windows. Go figure.
I’ll just add that another, albeit smaller, category of games that don’t work are really new, demanding titles. There’s not a lot of them for now, but naturally the deck wasn’t the most powerful device to begin with and over time less titles will work well.
Starfield was pointed out to me as an example of one that can’t run on the deck for performance reasons (not that Bethesda is known for their optimization) and BG3 was only barely playable at the lowest settings in the more demanding areas of the game (i.e. Act 3).
That said, for its price point, and considering most games are using the proton compatibility later, I was actually very impressed with its performance.
I love mine. I bought one as soon as they went on sale and it has completely replaced my gaming laptop when I travel. What I like most of all is that it makes it easy for me to play games in my backlog that I would not otherwise have plaid. I have almost 900 games in my library and it’s opened up my playtime in platformers, casual story games, puzzle games, racing, space sims, and more. The fact that I can do that on a plane or wherever on holiday is awesome. I have no doubt that there are games in my library it can’t play, but I’ve not actually tried to play a game on it that just didn’t work.
If you aren’t a gamer I don’t know how much value there is for you. If you want to become a gamer it’s a well balanced device with a solid store behind it and your library will be accessible by any PC you buy in the future. If you are considering it as a gift for a gamer, just keep in mind if they aren’t primarily a PC gamer (that is to say they play on a console) they will have to rebuy some games if they want to play on the deck.
As far as being a full laptop replacement, I wouldn’t bother.
I use mine to play some Steam games and to run emulators. I haven’t had any compatibility issues, but I also tend to stick to games that are Steam Deck verified.
As far as how good it is, it’s the only handheld pc I’ve used personally, but from reviews and discussions I’ve seen, despite other handhelds being more powerful, Steam Deck is a solid contender because of its price point and SteamOS being purpose-built for a handheld, whereas Windows is not.
