What you need to know
- The Division 2 recently launched on Steam for the first time.
- Initially it wouldn't load on Steam Deck thanks to what seemed to be an anti-cheat related issue.
- Ubisoft has issued a small patch and the game is now playable on the Deck.
PC players of The Division 2 previously had to buy either from Ubisoft or the Epic Games Store, but finally, at long, long last, it arrived on Steam recently. And for owners of the Steam Deck, that meant ears pricked up immediately.
Unfortunately, it didn't work. But, perhaps a little surprisingly, Ubisoft has issued a small patch for the game specifically targeted at making it work on the Deck. And as detailed by GamingonLinux and some folks on Reddit, it does indeed work.
It's not perfect, though. It's not going to be the slickest experience, at least not yet, but the biggest hurdle has been passed. Hopefully now Valve, and community involvement, can add some improvements to Proton to make it run a little nicer.
There are some things you need to know though before you go running to grab your Steam Deck and load it up. Pretty important things.
Do not allow it to run in DX12 mode, as it won't work. If you do enable it the first time you load it up, you'll have to do some fettling in the configuration files to turn it off and allow it to load. So don't do it.
The other is that you need to make sure your Steam Deck has the Proton EasyAntiCheat Runtime installed. It should be there automatically, but without it the game won't play. You can find it easily enough just by searching for it on your Deck.
It seems to work using the latest stable version of Proton, too, so no requirements to run Experimental if you don't want. And naturally, because it's on Steam now, you can seamlessly go between your desktop PC and your Deck. Gear up, Agents.
