Deck compatibility “verified/playable” can be greatly improved with minimal changes.

[RabidTreeMonkey]

I’d like to say up front that I love, yes love, my Steam Deck. It isn’t the hardware I want to use for all the games in my library, but it is absolutely awesome for so many titles that I hate having to raise any complaints. Hopefully this gripe will help lead to a better ecosystem overall.

In my hundreds of hours (maybe thousands?) playing a wide variety of games on Deck, I believe the “verified” and “playable” tags are given out far too easily and often do not match my experience when purchasing many of the games with these labels. I suspect the reason for these inaccurate labels could be largely solved with a simple fix; Valve waiting a longer period of time to send us the pop-up questionnaire that asks “does this match your gameplay experience?”

Currently, Valve asks us to rate Deck compatibility IN THE FIRST HOUR OR TWO. That is far too soon. Many games haven’t even opened up all their mechanics, or asked players to use all their controls/buttons/etc. Basically, Valve is asking us n00bs to a new game “hey, tell me if this works” when what would be far more beneficial would be to ask people who have put in (at least) a few more hours to get deeper into the game versus having just touched the surface experience.

Anyone else feel the same?

A couple quick examples of what I’m talking about here:


- Vampire Survivors: I have over 100 hours in this game, and it has mostly been awesome. That said, I’ve experienced all manner of problems from hard crashes (not including the developer joke) to broken controls forcing a full-system restart. Thankfully this is a roguelike so no major progress has been lost.


- Super Daryl Deluxe: I had played for 20 hours when I became unable to interact with much of the environment. Since then I’ve racked up another 4.5 in-game hours trying fixes. Looking through Steam community threads and elsewhere I have yet to find a solution to this game-breaking bug/issue that has halted all progress and I’m not about to put more time into the game till I know it will work correctly.

- Forza Horizon 4: it has been the opposite of “playable”. When I launch the game, over and over all I get is a full OS system crash causing restart of my Steam Deck. This is both using my Deck OLED’s original factory 1TB ssd, and the speedy 1TB sdcard I installed.

These are just a few examples that for me, do not match the compatibility as listed in their Steam store page. I’m sure many of you have your own similar stories.


In closing, apologies if this issue regarding “compatibility” has already been brought up. Im betting it has, but I did a search and haven’t found anything (I’m on my phone right now, so not the full screen experience).

[MUD]

Agreed, more time needed. The original Horizon Zero Dawn also got verified status but it was only badly playable during open world roaming and combat.
For FH4 this setting works great:

Originally posted by author:

https://www.protondb.com/app/1293830#NPGFDWAlSh

If it still crashes then something is wrong with your device.

[WarnerCK]

Originally posted by RabidTreeMonkey:

Currently, Valve asks us to rate Deck compatibility IN THE FIRST HOUR OR TWO. That is far too soon.

It's after half an hour of playtime. You can change your feedback at any time from the game's Properties.

The user feedback isn't directly tied to the ratings. They are issued based on Valve's (and Valve's contractors', most likely) testing. In principle a large volume of user feedback that the rating is inaccurate could trigger retesting and potential rerating, but I don't know for sure that that has ever happened.

The ratings that are directly contributed by users are those on ProtonDB, in parallel with those provided by Valve.

[Mahjik]

Another challenge is when a game is fine, and then the dev breaks it. I don't think Valve is going to switch the statuses that quickly (nor do they likely want to). FH4 for example has been broken a few times since the SD launched.

[RabidTreeMonkey]

Thank you for all of that, lotta interesting info.

Regarding this part:

Originally posted by WarnerCK:

*snip*
You can change your feedback at any time from the game's Properties.
*snip*

Are you sure that applies to Steam Deck? I’ve looked and under the properties tab on my Deck see nothing regarding compatibility feedback/rating.

Haven’t looked at my laptop yet since it is old w/ a gtx 1660ti and I have almost no games installed on it these days.

[Mahjik]

That option is only there for games that are currently labeled as "Verified".

[WarnerCK]

Originally posted by RabidTreeMonkey:

Regarding this part:

Originally posted by WarnerCK:

*snip*
You can change your feedback at any time from the game's Properties.
*snip*

Are you sure that applies to Steam Deck? I’ve looked and under the properties tab on my Deck see nothing regarding compatibility feedback/rating.

Yes. You only get to give feedback at all for games that have got the green tick, and you only get to adjust your feedback if you've given the feedback on the Deck in the first place. When those are true it's in the game's Properties menus at the bottom, labelled "Feedback."

[2B1Kenobi]

Originally posted by Mahjik:

Another challenge is when a game is fine, and then the dev breaks it. I don't think Valve is going to switch the statuses that quickly (nor do they likely want to). FH4 for example has been broken a few times since the SD launched.

GTA V has been one such game that lost its verified status after plenty of people complained about the BattlEye anticheat breaking Linux compatibility. It was applied just recently via an update.

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by 2B1Kenobi:

Originally posted by Mahjik:

Another challenge is when a game is fine, and then the dev breaks it. I don't think Valve is going to switch the statuses that quickly (nor do they likely want to). FH4 for example has been broken a few times since the SD launched.

GTA V has been one such game that lost its verified status after plenty of people complained about the BattlEye anticheat breaking Linux compatibility. It was applied just recently via an update.

If that's how you read my statement, that's not how it was intended to be read.

As games bounce between working, not working, working again, etc.. Valve isn't going to constantly change the status. When it's apparent that it's never going to work again, Valve "will" change the status but not those in between states.

[2B1Kenobi]

Originally posted by Mahjik:

Originally posted by 2B1Kenobi:

GTA V has been one such game that lost its verified status after plenty of people complained about the BattlEye anticheat breaking Linux compatibility. It was applied just recently via an update.

If that's how you read my statement, that's not how it was intended to be read.

As games bounce between working, not working, working again, etc.. Valve isn't going to constantly change the status. When it's apparent that it's never going to work again, Valve "will" change the status but not those in between states.

I am not disputing what you said or anything. I am merely adding to the discussion that it does happen, but only when people make up a stink that is large enough for Valve to care. Sorry if it seemed argumentative.

[D. Flame]

It is useless in its current form. There is a reason people check ProtonDB instead.

They should make devs self report whether it is verified or not, then Steam should double check it. And if a dev implements a change that breaks compatibility, then they should lose the verified tag immediately.

Then if a dev is found to be falsely self reporting compatibility, their self reporting should get held in a queue until AFTER Steam independently verifies it.

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by D. Flame:

They should make devs self report whether it is verified or not, then Steam should double check it. And if a dev implements a change that breaks compatibility, then they should lose the verified tag immediately.

That ain't going to happen. Most devs don't care if they broke SteamOS support, let alone will they do their own testing. A lot of the indie Devs have been doing their own Deck testing, but most of the large publishers don't care.

Microsoft broke FH4/5 several times. Valve did Proton fixes on their side.

[Trava]

Horizon 4 runs for me perfectly so that's an issue on your end