Remnant 2’s poor performance on the Steam Deck raises questions about how Valve measures game compatibility on handheld consoles for PC gaming.

Remnant 2 is verified by Steam Deck, according to Valve. The Soulslike shooter’s newly minted status was announced ahead of its release, and while Steam Deck owners rightly thought that meant the game would run well on the handheld console of PC gaming, the reality is a bit more complicated.

Owners of the portable device have expressed their displeasure with Remnant 2’s performance online since the game’s recent release. Although the game has been verified by Valve, its woeful performance has caused some users to lose faith in the reliability of the verification process.

YouTube channel Steam Deck Gaming strongly disagrees with the game’s verified status. While playing the game on the portable device, not only did they encounter unreadable text, but using the game’s default settings produced horrible results. “Below 30fps, with graphics that make me nauseous, I don’t think is a verified status,” they announced.

Our own experiences were not too different. While trying to run Remnant 2 on the Steam Deck, it was hard to keep the refresh rate above 30fps at native resolution, and it looked terrible. Even when using resolution enhancers like AMD FSR and Intel XeSS, the image refresh was still reduced. It’s not the experience you’d expect from a certified game.

If you see a ‘verified’ game on Steam, this should mean that the game is running fine. To receive the declaration in the first place, games must be “fully functional” and perform at their default graphics settings. As we now know, this is not the case with Remnant 2 at all.

Remnant 2 isn’t the first certified game to raise questions. While Last of Us Part One has been certified by Steam Deck, its performance has been heavily criticized. This is not unique to verified games. Some of the best anime games like Dragon Ball: Kakarot run great on Steam Deck. Still, the Namco Bandai title’s official Steam page is currently listed as ‘unsupported’, which may lead some people to overlook an otherwise impressive game.

Discussions on how to improve the compatibility process have already been opened up at Steam Deck HQ, and that’s something we agree with. Users on the Steam Deck subreddit have also suggested adding in-game authentication at different frame rates, such as “authenticated at 30fps”. Whatever the solution, we hope Valve is already looking for ways to streamline the authentication process.