Day One Steam Deck Games: What to Play At Launch

The long-anticipated Steam Deck is shaping up to be a formidable handheld gaming PC. With 1280×800 or 1280×720 HD resolution and frame rates of 45-80 FPS or more that are possible with most games, the release of the Steam Deck in February 2022 has people wondering what the Steam library is going to look like on day one of Deck ownership.

While most games will be at least playable, there are some finer points you should know about, as well as some info that may already be populated in your library before launch that you can look at to get prepped for launch.

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The “Deck Verified” Rating System

The Linux-based SteamOS that the Deck runs on will be capable of some incredible graphics, but as any gamer knows, the eye-candy is only one piece of the big picture. This is why Valve has developed the Deck Verified rating system and has begun applying its rubric of compatibility to all of the games in the Valve offering library.

This rating system lets you know at a glance which games have been evaluated and how they fare on the Deck. If you are a current Valve customer, some of this data should be making its way into your game library when writing. There are four levels, each with its icon visible on the game’s title card.

Verified

Signaled by the green checkmark, this is the rating that lets you know the developers have fully optimized the game to run on SteamOS while meeting specific criteria.

Deck Verified games will offer full controller support, use correct controller glyphs, and auto-enable the onscreen keyboard when needed. They will also be verified to use the default resolution have solid default settings and readable text.

They will not create any compatibility warnings, and if they use Proton, all the intermediate software like anti-cheat should also be supported.

Playable

Playable status has a yellow mark and means that while the game is playable, you may need to do some extra tweaks to make it run optimally. This may entail manual text entry, requiring the touchscreen to navigate, or manually adjusting graphics options for acceptable performance.

Unsupported

Unsupported games will have a “no” sign and are entirely unsupported or cannot run on Steam Deck. This means they may require a VR headset or be incompatible with Proton. Proton helps run Windows games in the Linux environment.

Unknown

This is the question mark icon, which means that it hasn’t been tested for compatibility or optimization. Evaluation is ongoing, so an unknown game at launch may become Deck Verified a week later, next quarter, or never.

The Best Games for SteamOS

At launch, you can expect to be able to immediately play some of the hottest games around, with a total of 67 of them, including:

Stardew Valley
Civilization VI
Valheim
Terraria
ARK: Survival Evolved
Left 4 Dead 2
Carrion
Factorio
Hollow Knight
RimWorld
Crusader Kings III
Don’t Starve Together
Total War: Warhammer III
Plague Inc: Evolved
Dying Light Enhanced
Last Epoch
Cities: Skylines
Wildermyth
Overcooked! 2
Euro Truck Simulator 2

In case some of these clutter up your internal storage, keep in mind that you can always install Steam games on SD card.

Are There Games You Can’t Play on Steam Deck?

Even though they are among some of the best first-person shooters, battle royale titles, and more, some games will not be playable on Steam Deck. Luckily, it’s a relatively short list, and there’s plenty of time for the devs to port them to the Deck. Unsupported games include: