Unfortunately verification is massively broken.
It’s only ever revisited after updates when a huge company breaks all their games and valve has shown in the past that they’re willing to bend the rules of verification for some high-profile games.
We should ignore it and use protondb instead. You always get the latest comments from people and there is no corporation with a conflict of interest behind it.
While this is true, ProtonDB has even better numbers than Valve so it’s still a win for the topic.
While it’s unfortunate that the verification process isn’t iron-clad, it still reflects a good goal and substantial progress toward it. The fact is, the verification program serves more as a fancy inventory of how their software catalog runs on Proton/Linux and Valve is probably more worried about games people play that are no longer actively developed than it is on fixing every game for every developer.
Personally, I suspect that 3-5 years from now, once Valve has done a complete once-over of their complete library, they’ll come back around with a ‘premium’ version of verified that’s more geared toward requirements for current and new games, one which is more focused on working with active developers.
That’s what I’ve been half expecting to happen with the success of the Steam Deck, a “Steam Deck Certified” program. Something opt in from the publisher, where they meet some standard, and in exchange they get placement in the “Steam Deck Store” or something.
Many publishers are already testing build against the Steam Deck, it’s a single locked down hardware specification, so serves as a useful target. A super-verified “Certified” or whatever it gets called, would put a bit of the onus for ensuring compatibility on the publisher. Plus, you could have a higher standard than “runs on Steam Deck” and actually require that “Certified” software automatically use SD-friendly settings.
The Deck movement is also a big win for lower-end hardware gamers, and linux gamers everywhere! Love seeing so many titles verified for those ecosystems, even though I don’t currently own a Deck :D
I’m quite glad that it’s becoming way easier to play on the steam deck !
Not interested in owning one of these myself, but thanks to everyone that does - the huge success makes life much better for Linux gamers, general compatibility has been absolutely through the roof recently.
I love my Deck, except my life got busy and all the games I play require mb+k. Thought I’d end of using it a lot more lol.
I play some games with the dock and a M+KB. It’s a nice compromise for us Mac owners
The game porting library addition to MacOS was a nice surprise for Mac users, it’s exciting times
Knowing how Apple operates, they’ll do anything to build the solution around their proprietary crap and while using open tech under the hood, never contribute anything back.
agreed, i don’t understand why any game developer would write software for an os that breaks compatibility so often and touts it as a feature.
this goes for any software that has initial upfront devel and then persists in low maintence for years, apple is just a terrible target for that since they explicitly don’t care about backwards compatibility.
I am yet to discover a game that can’t be played on the Deck. Steam Input, the touchpads and the gyro are great at getting a good control scheme for everything. I even played StarCraft on that thing.
For me, it’s Genshin Impact that keeps my Windows install around. Anti cheat stuff is still bullshit.
Yup, I find analog stick plus touchpad to be perfectly adequate for most of my m+kb games. I’m not sure I could make it through a fast twitch shooter like Doom on it, but for the most part it works just fine.
Bought my wife a steam deck for Mother’s Day and she is already addicted to it. I’m glad to see how successful it has been so far! It really is a great system.
hell yeah!
Really great hardware for people who don’t mind tinkering. With a bit of effort and experimentation its possible to get way more games to work than what is listed as officially verified and playable.
