TECH NEWS – The company has analysed the compatibility of the Steam Deck with its handheld, optimising the battery and improving the experience of the device that has been available to customers for a month.

Valve started shipping the first Steam Deck devices to customers a month ago. The company has reviewed some of the progress made in that time, which includes an official listing of more than 2,000 games compatible with the handheld; the plan is to categorise the entire store catalogue into different categories based on whether they are perfectly playable, problem playable or incompatible.

“There are now 2000 games officially listed in the verified or playable category on Steam Deck.”

“It’s been exciting to see the variety of games the community has been playing – new or old, big or small, every genre – it seems like players have been having a ton of fun on Deck,” says Valve. “We’re going to continue charging through the Steam catalogue and can’t wait to share the next big milestone here. We’re also paying close attention to customer feedback on these tests to make sure Deck Verified is serving its purpose. To that end, we’ve added a feature where customers can provide feedback and indicate their agreement or disagreement with the Verified rating of each title.”

The priority is to make support for as many games as possible available, including those using anti-cheat technology. “The two biggest anti-cheat services, BattlEye and Easy Anti-Cheat, now have a streamlined path for developers that choose to enable support for Proton and Steam Deck. Elden Ring and Apex Legends are two examples of games which are taking advantage of this work, so far.”

Battery and other improvements

Other developments in recent weeks include improvements to the library, the game store, Xbox Cloud Gaming access, Windows 10 and soon Windows 11 compatibility.

Another critical point is the improved battery life. The company reminds us that the battery lasts between 2 and 8 hours depending on the game, but “there are additional options if you want it to last longer. Last month, we added the option to reduce the frame rate to 15 FPS (which works great for visual novels, puzzle games and many simulation games). And for more skilled gamers, we’ve added TDP (processor power), GPU clock speed control and FSR (screen resize) settings to help optimise battery life even further.”

Source: Vandal