In Years of Testing, Valve Hasn’t Been Able to Find a Game the Steam Deck Couldn’t Handle

The Steam Deck has been getting universal praise from pretty much everyone that’s laying eyes on it, and it’s easy to see why- a handheld gaming PC that can run the entire Steam library? That’s an exciting elevator pitch if I’ve ever heard one. Of course, the question a few people have asked is- can it run the entire Steam library? The device runs on a custom version of the SteamOS and uses the Proton compatibility layer to make sure that Steam games run without any issue on it, but Proton’s track record has been spotty in the past, while there’s also the fact that the Steam Deck’s specs might not be up to scratch for some of the more demanding games out there.

According to Valve, however, that hasn’t been an issue. Speaking to IGN (via PC Gamer), Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais said that the company has been testing games from the Steam catalog on the device for years, and while initially they were having issues running some of the more recent releases, the device in its current form can handle pretty much anything they’ve thrown at it.

“We’ve been looking at various games the past few years in the back catalog, but the real test for us was games that were coming out last year,” Griffais said. “They just couldn’t really run very well on the previous types of prototypes and architectures we were testing. This is the first time we’ve achieved the level of performance that is required to really run the latest generation of games without problems. All the games we wanted to be playable is, really, the entire Steam library. We haven’t really found something we could throw at this device that it couldn’t handle.”

Given the ambitions that Valve has for the Steam Deck and how successful they want it to be, it’s pretty important that the game is able to run most (if not all) of the games people would want it to run. Valve has previously also said that they made improvements to Proton to ensure that games run on the device without any hiccups, so it definitely seems that this is something they’ve been mindful of.

The Steam Deck is launching in select regions of the world this December.