Gabe Newell’s company revealed the requirements games must meet to earn Steam Machine certification.
At GDC, Valve officially defined the requirements for the Steam Machine Verified badge, targeting native 1080p resolution. This minimum aligns with early analysis of the system’s specifications, which pointed out that 4K@60 FPS gameplay will rely heavily on AMD’s FSR upscaler. Valve reiterated that every Steam Deck Verified game will also be Steam Machine Verified, with the same input expectations as on the handheld PC. The biggest surprise, however, is the performance bar: native 1080p at 30 FPS, which is far from the message delivered during the presentation that the system supports 4K gameplay at 60 FPS with FSR.
Since these requirements are clearly only the minimum conditions for certification, achieving 4K resolution and 60 FPS gameplay should still be widely possible, though the most demanding titles will likely require aggressive upscaling settings. While the Steam Deck Verified badge automatically makes a game Steam Machine Verified, Valve also revealed that if a game is not supported on Steam Deck due to performance, it will run tests to check whether that game meets Steam Machine’s minimum performance requirements.
To receive Steam Machine Verified, every Steam Deck Verified game is also Steam Machine Verified. Input expectations are the same as for Steam Deck. For Verified status, it must run at 30 FPS at 1080p. Performance must be six times the performance level used for Steam Deck. Verification does not include testing display resolution or legibility, and there will be an updated API for hardware detection.
Alongside the Steam Machine Verified requirements, Valve also published Verified requirements for the company’s other new hardware launching this year, the Steam Frame VR headset. To be Steam Frame Verified, a game must be designed for standalone play, both VR and non-VR games will be tested, the game must be fully playable with Steam Frame controllers, the target performance is 90 FPS for standalone, and 30 FPS at 1280×720 for standalone 2D. A legible UI is mandatory.
Even if we now have a clearer picture of what to expect from Steam Machine in terms of performance, we still don’t know exactly when it will be available.
