The Steam Deck officially released today, launching a brand new platform that could reshape PC gaming as we know it. If you're thinking about getting one, you might want to plan exactly which games you'd like to play.
The Steam Deck is in our hands (more about that soon!), and it feels like the future of PC gaming is about to change. Valve has done a really impressive job in trying to adapt the mouse and keyboard interface onto a mobile build. However, the library of Steam games is incredibly vast (over 50.000!), and not every game developer can guarantee compatibility with the new platform.
If you're planning on nabbing one, don't worry though. There is an easy way to plan ahead and see what games from your existing library are already functional with the Steam Deck.
Is Elden Ring compatible with the Steam Deck?
That's a resounding "yes!" You can die over and over, anywhere, by playing Elden Ring on the Steam Deck. Probably not very surprising, since Elden Ring is also available on consoles. But for PC gamers, you can take the adventure with you wherever, switching from your home PC, thanks to Steam Cloud.
How to check what games are compatible with the Steam Deck?
There's two methods, but the first is really fun — you can easily see what games from your library are compatible with the Steam Deck. Visit the Steam Deck My Games page, sign in with your Steam credentials, and then Steam will generate sections with images of games from your library, divided according to compatibility levels.
Above, you can see a screenshot of my library (don't judge) containing what games are fully compatible with the Steam Deck. That means, the developers of those titles put in special care in making the controls work, so you can expect easy and full functionality. Expect to play games like Vampire Survivors, Risk of Rain 2, Terraria, Left 4 Dead, Stardew Valley, Hades with no issues.
Keep scrolling in the report to see more information.
Next, you will see a list of games that you can launch in the Steam Deck, but those haven't been specifically configured to work with it. This is going to be a mixed bag depending on the title (we'll have to do some further testing on this ourselves), but developers also contiunously work on making their titles function with the new platform. I can see DotA 2 running, but you might have to use the screen touch controls and touchpads to control the hero, which will probably be pretty awkward without keyboard shortcuts. Among Us, on the other hand, should be pretty easy to play, but some issues might occur. Civilization VI is available on the Nintendo Switch already, so the Steam Deck touch controls might work pretty well with it.
You might have to bring out the onscreen keyboard to enter the name of your character, adjust graphics settings manually, or use the touchscreen to navigate to the launcher, according to Valve.
Lastly, the report will tell which games in your library don't work, and give you a number for the remaining games in your library that don't work. Notably among them is Lost Ark, but perhaps that kind of support will come soon.
The second method for checking compatibility is visting the Steam Deck website. That is an official list of games that are cerified to work with the device. You can see even more on the Great on Deck page on Steam.
Stay tuned to see which great SteelSeries gaming headsets work with the Steam Deck!
