Steam Deck developers 'surprised' how good it feels to play

(Image credit: Valve)

The upcoming Steam Deck by Valve was supposed to ship in Dec of 2021, but merely as with PS5 restocks, getting hardware into people's hands has been a challenge throughout the pandemic. While first shipments should be going out in the next few weeks, developers have been able to get early dev kits to brainstorm testing and optimizing their games, and many have been left stunned, including certain tech reviewers on YouTube.

Per interviews with developers by our sis-site PC Gamer, the Steam Deck just works. And at that place was some hesitation, considering the Steam Deck runs on Linux with Proton, which is a Windows compatibility layer that sits atop the open-source operating system.

"I was surprised how well games work on it without whatever changes, and how good information technology feels to play on information technology," said Jonathan Smårs, a developer and designer at Fe Gate in an interview with PC Gamer. "Valheim worked from day one on Steam Deck without any changes."

Other than lowering some graphical options, Smårs said the team was able to go the game running with nary an issue.

"The graphic settings need to be fix downward a bit compared to my high end PC of form, but I'thousand still impressed with what such a small-scale handheld can handle without whatever platform specific optimizations," said Smårs.

Smårs also posted a video on Twitter of the game running on a Steam Deck dev unit on Twitter last month.

@Valheimgame is set up for the Steam Deck from @valvesoftware! Information technology's a very impressive slice of mechanism. I'chiliad looking frontwards to the release and playing Valheim on the go with my friends! @Steam @OnDeck pic.twitter.com/vX8KcR7arCJanuary 24, 2022

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Now, not all games are tailor fabricated for the Steam Deck controllers, particularly PC games. Strategy titles especially work best with a mouse and keyboard. For one developer, the affect pad on the Steam Deck worked better than expected.

"The touchpad for the mouse, I dare say, might exist one of the best I've ever used. I'll demand to pattern a controller layout for it, also as write controller back up for the game, but I suspect my game will be playable on it when that's done," said Raymond Doerr, of SixtyGig Games and developer of Rise to Ruins, a city-building strategy game.

Of course, developers are nether an NDA and can't spill everything regarding the Steam Deck. Ane developer did tell PC Gamer that the Steam Deck Bone could utilise some optimization. The developer establish that some games would not notice the Steam Deck's controller and that scrolling for games without a search part was a hurting.

Valve, existence a game development business firm itself, has been working on making Steam Deck development every bit seamless as possible it seems. At the moment, Valve is aiming for any PC game to be playable on the Steam Deck's 1280 x 800 resolution display. Right now, more than 100 titles are verified to be working on Steam Deck. That'southward a tall order, specially because that Crysis 3 is now in development. Considering that AMD Fidelity FX Super Resolution (FSR) upscaling now works with Steam Deck, graphically intensive games should exist able to render at lower resolutions and even so expect bang-up on the handheld.

Still, not all developers take full confidence in Valve. This is far from the visitor's first foray into gaming hardware.

"I am a fleck worried most support, I've had a Steam controller, Steam Link, HTC Vive, and an (sic) Valve Index, and 2 of the four are pretty much discontinued," said Raymond Qian, project manager and CTO for Sekai Project, an American video game publisher known best for translating and releasing Japanese visual novels.

Nevertheless, Qian feels that as long as Valve is on top of Proton, things should work fine.

Ultimately, we'll have to encounter how the community reacts later on the Steam Deck starts shipping on Feb. 28. The list of fully verified games is curt, and Fortnite volition non be coming to the Steam Deck. But because the Nintendo Switch just surpassed 100-one thousand thousand-unit sales, Valve may have a striking on its easily, especially if the Switch 2 is still a few more than years away.

Imad Khan is news editor at Tom's Guide, helping direct the day'due south breaking coverage. Prior to working at the site, Imad was a full-time freelancer, with bylines at the New York Times, the Washington Mail and ESPN. Outside of piece of work, yous can find him sitting blankly in forepart of a Give-and-take document trying desperately to write the first pages of a new volume.