It’s hard to imagine PC gaming without Steam Deck, but the handheld has only been on the scene for two and a half years. Since then, Valve has busied itself rating the compatibility of games new and old. It continues the practice even now, in what is for all intents and purposes a never-ending task. Through its labour, the company and its handheld have recently hit a new milestone of over 16,000 officially supported titles.
Despite the shortcomings of its internal specs, there’s no sign of demand for Steam Deck OLED and LCD slowing. Even with plenty of alternative, more powerful rivals on the scene, compatibility with Valve’s system remains valuable to players and developers alike. This is undoubtedly partly due to the appeal of SteamOS and its console-like user experience, something ROG Ally X will benefit from with others likely to follow.
However, it’s SteamOS that necessitates playability checks from Valve. Despite the impressive strides the Proton compatibility layer has made, it can’t guarantee a smooth experience. After all, Steam Deck doesn’t support over 4,000 games (via SteamDB) at the time of writing. Some affected titles will be because of performance, but even now some anti-cheat measures, codecs, or other variables refuse to play nice. Thankfully, community efforts like ProtonDB make it all the easier to sort through any potential problems.
These issues appear to thankfully be cropping up less frequently among modern titles. After all, Elden Ring was Steam Deck top dog in July 2024. Similarly, Black Myth: Wukong is proving popular on the device, despite lacking an official compatibility rating. There’s no getting around the performance demands of games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, mind, but Steam Deck 2 should remedy those woes when it inevitably arrives.
I frequently use my Steam Deck, and it’s heart-warming to see how far the platform has come and the community that has blossomed around it. Much as I look forward to a successor, presumably powered by a Ryzen AI 300 series APU, I’ll be surprised if it impresses me as much as the OG. Who knew Zen 2 and RDNA 2 would prove such a fruitful combo for success?
Of course, I could be totally off the mark and Valve may team up with Intel and use a chip equipped with Battlemage graphics. With MSI confident that Lunar Lake can give its Claw AI 8 Plus handheld a chance, anything’s possible.