Steam Deck, How Playable?

Gaming
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Do we need a separate category for the Steam Deck or do we pile it all in gaming?

Anyway felt a bit disappointed here with some games only making it into Playable and not Steam Deck Verified.

Borderlands 2 is verified while Borderlands 1 and 3 are listed only as playable. Tomb Raider is only listed as playable despite having a native build. Also Grim Dawn.

But I know that Grim Dawn only needs a few changes to controller config to play beautifully using a Steam Controller. Also Borderlands 3 played beautifully using the Steam Controller after I spent a bit of time setting it up so the controls were almost identical to Borderlands 2.

PacMan 256 and Obduction shouldn’t need much to play well on Steam Deck, same for Kingdom Two Crowns.

So was wondering if we could get some of the games in Playable that only required one or two steps to configure for the Steam Controller if you don’t currently have access to a Deck, or one or two steps to get them playing beautifully with the Steam Deck if you have access to the hardware. Feel free to pick your favourites if they are in Playable.

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I’m critical of the WineDB and ProtonDB method because I feel there is incentive to one-up Windows and bend the truth to what is playable and what isn’t.

In regards to ProtonDB, we end up with Platinum meaning playable without effort and Gold meaning everything from “you have to launch with a simple command line argument” to “the sound glitches a little” to “you need to install and use Proton-GE” which, as a rating, means absolutely nothing.

I give kudos to Valve here because they have a clear financial incentive for games to be in the verified and playable categories but they recognize these issues and seem to have two criteria

  1. Has it been verified by us to work (Verified)?
  2. Will it load and play to the end without game breaking bugs or extra efforts (Playable)?

I’ve always kind of wanted someone to do a “Real WineDB” where things either Work (launches and runs flawlessly with the default settings) or they Don’t Work (everything else).

So I’m okay with Valve being stingy on verification.

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