The Steam Deck ships this holiday season, and you might be asking yourself if that shiny new toy can play everything in your Steam library. Valve is giving you the answer with Deck Verified, a system that 🅰checks and reviews whether or not a Steam game is compatible with the Deck.
Just as you may review a game's PC specs before installing, prospective Steam Deck owners may want an idea of how a new game runs before they buy. That's where Deck Verified comes in. Valve says it plans on reviewing the entire Steam catalog through the new process.
There are four ratings that Valve will give each Steam game to signify their playab𝔉ility on Steam Deck: Verified, Playable, Unsupported, and Unknown. The Deck Verified naming scheme and icon indicators make for a pretty straightforward process by the t♑ime it gets to you, but there are quite a few bars games will need to hit for a verified Steam Deck rating.
Verified signifies that the game has passed all checks for input, display, seamlessness, and system support, which means the game will run as-is on Steam Deck. This rating applies to most games, such as Ghostrunner and Death Stranding. The Playable rating means the game functions well, but it needs extra effort from your end to configure and play, like pulling up an onscreen keyboard to type in a character's name or using a touchscreen to navigate a launcher. Unsupported means a game will not run on Steam Deck at all, so don't bother trying to play VR games on it. If you see the Unknown tag, that means Valve hasn't accessed the title just yet.
Fortunately, games with ratings lower than Verified may not be stuck there forever. Developer updates or changes to the platform's software mean something the Deck couldn't run could see a bump to Playable or Verified. Games with the Verified rating may appear on the Good on Deck page, which is the first tab of the Steam Deck's storefront.
The Steam Deck launches in December, but that's only if you w𒀰ere able to snag a pre-order when sales went live. Until then, if you're worried about compatibility options for your favorites, Valve says that shouldn't be a concern since it hasn't found a game the Deck can't run yet. Developer CD🥂PR also shared a little footage of 🌳the new platform running The Witcher 3, just in case that's still in your Steam backlog.