Valve’s not so little console that could has hit a new landmark.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, SteamDB has found that 14,023 games can be played on the Steam Deck.
Out of that number, 4,607 are Steam Deck Verified. This is the highest rank in Valve’s four rank system of Steam Deck compatibility. This means that they will work for the Steam Deck with no additional work on the player’s part.
Of course, the remaining 9,416 games may require tweaking, and under this category certain games are considered “Playable.” This should be somewhat expected, as Steam itself was originally conceived of as a platform for PC games. That means most of these games were expected to be playable with a mouse and keyboard.
Now, if the game in question was a first-person shooter, such as Valve’s Half-Life series, than it is expected that the transition to game controller controls should be seamless. However, if we are talking about a franchise like the recently released Command and Conquer collection, gamers will have to figure out ways to make it work.
Now, Valve has some things set up on that end as well. As we know, the Steam Deck itself has two touch pads on opposite sides, which can replicate mouse input across the screen. Gamers can customize their use of these touch pads to their liking. Of course, the flip side to that is individual gamers have to figure that out for themselves.
Now, Steam also has a key binding system which should make making custom control schemes easy. In fact, that key binding system also has a community element, so one gamer could program a very good control scheme for one game and share it to everyone.
With all of these in account, however, it won’t be reasonable to expect that this will fix compatibility for all games on Steam. Either Valve will come up with new controller solutions for the Steam Deck 2, or this current state where most games are playable after tweaking will be the state of the platform.
If you would like to check what games on your library can be played on a Steam Deck, Valve has created a page that will conveniently cross check with your account. Just don’t get too disappointed about the size of the lists for your games on the untested and unsupported lists. Valve just has to deal with too many games to check on this.
Of course, the longer the Steam Deck keeps going, the more games will get tested, or hopefully, be made compatible with the platform, in the future.
