When Steam Deck support comes to games is “up to our studios”, says Microsoft

Valve’s Steam Deck can run most games, but that doesn’t mean it can run most games well. In listing out the status of their own games, Microsoft say that Psyconauts 2 is “Verified” – meaning it’s fully supported – while Sea Of Thieves is merely “playable” and Halo Infinite isn’t supported at all due to its anti-cheat.

Hopefully those games will be better supported in future, but, Microsoft say, “It’s up to our studios how they fit Steam Deck integration for their games into their busy schedules.”

“Here at XGS we love gaming and think people should be able to play our games as freely and easily as possible – any time, any place, sharing incredible experiences with friends or immersing themselves in solo adventures,” begins the post by Xbox Game Studios on Steam.

“It’s up to our studios how they fit Steam Deck integration for their games into their busy schedules, and with a lot of great stuff already in the works some titles may take longer. We’ve put together this list so you can see how our titles are coming along.”

Valve have developed their own rating systems for games on Steam, which measures their performance on Steam Deck against certain criteria. Of the Xbox Game Studios games, Psyconauts 2, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Battletoads and Max: The Curse Of Brotherhood all get top marks, earning the “Verified” label. That means they should run well, control well, and look good.

Sea Of Thieves, Forza Horizon 5 and 4, Quantum Break, State Of Decay: Year One Survival Edition, are all “Playable”. That means you can play them, obviously, but their controls or other elements might not be best suited to Steam Deck’s portable size without further work.

The games that are simply not playable, all due to their anti-cheat features not playing nice with Proton – the layer which makes Steam games work under the Linux-based SteamOS – are Gears 5, Halo: Master Chief Collection, Halo Infinite and Microsoft Flight Simulator X

It’s not a surprise that not every game runs perfectly on a new device, and this isn’t a full-throated promise of support from Microsoft, but it’s at least a sign that they’re thinking about it even if the timeline is uncertain. Given James’ positive words in his Steam Deck review, I hope more studios do retroactively tweak their games to run better on the new machine.