What you need to know
- Valve's Steam Deck is set to finally arrive come the end of February.
- Verified games are the ones we know will work to the highest quality experience on the Steam Deck.
- Recent PC launch God of War and Bethesda's Deathloop are among the latest big names to get the badge.
If you ordered a Steam Deck, like a certain writer of this post, and you're hoping to be in one of the early batches, in particular, the good news continues to roll. The Steam Deck Verified list of games has increased sizeably and among the new additions are a couple of heavyweights. Sony's God of War and Microsoft/Bethesda's Deathloop are both Steam Deck Verified, as is the older release, Horizon Zero Dawn.
We're still using third-party tools like SteamDB at this point in time to see the data that Valve is uploading in the background, but if you take a look at the site right now, clear as day, both games have the Steam Deck logo and the tick to signal they're verified. Not only does that mean these games will work, it means Valve is sure they're going to work to the level they want games to play on the Steam Deck hardware.
We already have some idea on Steam Deck performance thanks to early hands-on time and a number of developers posting videos on social media of their titles on the Deck. But it's still somewhat mindblowing to think that God of War, a brand new, and fairly intensive game not only runs well but hits the mark for verification.
For those wondering why this is a big deal at all, remember that the Steam Deck doesn't run Windows. Steam OS 3.0 is based on Linux and makes use of Valve's Proton compatibility tool in order to allow games compiled for Windows to run. Proton has come on a long way in recent years and in most cases now you can play a game on Linux blissfully unaware it isn't a native port.
These aren't the only games joining the mix, the total has gone up to 96 games already with three weeks to go until shipping begins. Other titles added include Ni No Kuni II, Death's Door, The Evil Within and Life is Strange 2. And with the recent news that the Steam Deck will implement AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution technology as well, all these games should get an added boost without the need for any additional user input.
If you're already on the list, Steam Deck reservations will begin processing from Feb 25, but unfortunately, if you're only now thinking you'd like one, there's going to be a quite lengthy wait.
Play your Steam library anywhere
Wanted more places to play your Steam library? Now you'll be able to with the Steam Deck. This machine comes in three configurations, each allowing you to play your games locally and portably.
