Valve’s Steam Deck is a hotly anticipated handheld gaming PC, and with that begs the question of how many games can run on it. A new Proton game compatibility milestone means lots of big games will run perfectly.
For those unfamiliar, Valve’s Steam Deck runs Windows games through Proton, a compatibility layer that enables the Linux-based SteamOS to properly run Windows-only games in Linux. This is a separate channel from native Linux ports of games on Steam, which do exist.
The folks over on ProtonDB have conducted an analysis that confirms a new Proton game compatibility milestone, with 80% of Steam’s top 100 games running perfectly on Proton, with a few small tweaks. Only 30% of the top 100 run flawlessly or natively on Linux, however.
A number of factors are keeping the majority of games from being very or totally compatible with SteamOS through Proton. These include things like anti-cheating or digital rights management (DRM) software that are both used to stop third-party code to exploit multiplayer or the attempt to stop piracy.
Updating these games with Linux/Proton compatible versions would help, but removing them altogether is arguably the best thing for fans as currently big games like New World and Destiny 2 remain unplayable on SteamOS. There are also a number of games that are only coded for Windows and have various compatibility issues with Linux.
While the Steam Deck was delayed into February 2022, Valve is firm that the Steam Deck is on track for the new February 2022 release. Ongoing concerns for chip shortages from Intel and others have some concerned more delays could happen, however.
Valve’s Steam Deck is available for pre-order in three flavors: $399 (64GB), $529 (256GB), and $649 (512GB), over on the Steam store.
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