The Steam Deck version of Elden Ring is better optimised than other PC versions thanks to Valve.

We received two big releases at the beginning of this year; FromSoftware’s Elden Ring and Steam Deck, Valve’s new handheld console. The latter is a hardware that allows you to take your Steam library anywhere. It has been progressively arriving at the homes of the first people who managed to pre-order it.

Some users have been able to see that Elden Ring is stable on Steam Deck, or at least suffers from fewer hiccups than the PC version in general, which has been the worst optimised in the first few days.

Why is this if Steam Deck is just another PC? Well, as Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais explains in Eurogamer, the fact that it’s closed hardware helps provide a better experience, and the company has made specific adjustments to Linux/Proton and Steam Deck’s GPU to make From’s game perform better. The result the console delivers is similar to that of a PlayStation 4, outperforming the Xbox One S in performance and visuals, which is quite an achievement considering we’re talking about a handheld.

“At least at launch, Steam Deck offers a more consistent level of performance than many powerful PCs,” says Digital Foundry. According to them, the only downside is the battery life, which, despite the 30 FPS limitation, can only handle 2 hours of gameplay.

Elden Ring has become the most popular game since its launch on 25 February, therefore it’s important who’s devices provide the smoothest run for the game. In fact, in this kind of videogames, the PC version is more important than ever, since the bulk of the community plays them on PC, as we have seen in the official sales figures shared by Bandai Namco.

Source: IGN