Valve is Reviewing Games Compatible with SteamOS

With the introduction of Steam Deck, the future of gaming in Linux is more promising than ever.

The presence of Steam Deck has already made it possible to bring in anti-cheat engine support to Linux. If you did not know, Steam Deck is powered by the upcoming new SteamOS (based on Arch Linux).

And, now, to make things better, Valve has announced to introduce new compatibility badges to showcase games on Steam that should work with Steam Deck powered by SteamOS.

Steam Deck Verified: What Does it Mean?

Like what we mentioned about referring ProtonDB to check compatibility in our Linux gaming guide, Valve aims to verify every game that works with Steam Deck.

As shown in the image above, it will display four categories of compatibility badges. Accordingly, you can decide if you want to try the game on the Steam Deck console or not.

Valve plans to thoroughly review the games for Steam Deck compatibility and update the status with every new update made to the game.

Overall, the games will be tested to fulfill the following criteria:

Full controller support.
Should support the default 1280 x 800 (or 1280 x 720) resolution of Steam Deck.
Without any warnings displayed as a seamless experience.
If running through Proton, the game needs to support it.

The compatibility badge will also display detailed insights on what you can expect as per the status.

And, if you are a developer, you can go through the official details of the review process to make your game compatible.

Does This Mean You Won’t Need ProtonDB for Linux Desktop Gaming?

While I cannot confirm that, but it raises the potential for it.

As of now, Linux gamers utilize the community portal ProtonDB to check if a Windows-only game works with Linux.

With Steam Deck verified, if the compatibility badges are shown cross-platform, it could be useful for Linux desktops. Technically, Steam Deck is still Linux, but your PC’s hardware configuration is not the same.

But, it would be useful to rely on Valve’s official review process to launch a game on Steam without worrying about its compatibility on your Linux desktop.

We can only hope for better when it comes to gaming on Linux.

What do you think about Valve’s new compatibility checking initiative for Steam Deck? Feel free to let me know your thoughts.