Microsoft has released a roundup of Xbox Game Studios games that are supported on Valve’s new Steam Deck but there are a handful of notable titles that aren’t supported, Halo Infinite among them.
In a post on Steam, Xbox Game Studios confirms that, alongside Halo Infinite, Gears 5, Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Microsoft Flight Simulator X also fall under the “unsupported” category for the Steam Deck.
The reason for this is given as simply being “due to anti-cheat” and it remains unclear whether there are plans to help these titles be supported further down the line. Microsoft also explains in the post that it’s up to individual development studios “how they fit Steam Deck integration for their games into their busy schedules” adding that “with a lot of great stuff already in the works some titles may take a little longer.”
The rest of the post is a little more positive for current and prospective Steam Deck owners, with a total of fourteen titles deemed either fully “Verified” or “Playable” on the Steam Deck, many of them popular releases.
Valve itself has previously said that its “standards for titles to get a Verified or a Playable rating are very high”, explaining that “If a game shows controller glyphs 99 per cent of the time but tells you to ‘press F' sometimes during gameplay, that's Playable, not Verified. If 99 per cent of a game's functionality is accessible, but accessing one optional in-game minigame crashes, or one tutorial video doesn't render, that's Unsupported.
The eight Xbox Game Studios games listed as Verified for the Steam Deck are:
Meanwhile, the six titles that come under the Playable category are:
These 14 titles from Xbox Game Studios now join a list of more than a thousand games which have been flagged as Verified or Playable on Steam Deck. You can check out our full thoughts on Valve’s handheld in our full review.
Analysis: Sitting tight
Microsoft’s four unsupported games aren’t the only titles we’ve seen swerve the Steam Deck in recent weeks. Other third-party titles such as Fortnite and Destiny 2 are also still excluded from the Steam Deck system.
With regards to Destiny 2, developer Bungie has gone as far to say that the game “is not supported for play on the Steam Deck or on any system utilizing Steam Play's Proton unless Windows is installed and running” and that “players who attempt to launch Destiny 2 on the Steam Deck through SteamOS or Proton will be unable to enter the game and will be returned to their game library after a short time.” Further to that, “players who are not accessing Destiny 2 through Windows and attempt to bypass the SteamOS/Proton incompatibility will be met with a game ban.”
Of course, it’s still early days for Valve’s handheld. It’s become clear that there’s demand for the console but it could take some time for things to get moving and for its library to drastically expand and reflect the scale of Steam as a whole. Valve itself has said that “only after real customers get to interact do we start getting real feedback and real data. While we worked hard to build the Deck Verified program as it exists, we're excited that now we get to iterate based on how you're really interacting with it.”
The Steam Deck didn't have a big launch title—though Aperture Desk Job does an admirable job of introducing players to the hardware—but Valve is currently working on a few more of its own games. In a recent interview with Axios, Greg Coomer, a designer for Valve, revealed that “there are multiple games in development right now at Valve” and that he thinks “they're pretty exciting ones.” It's a case of ‘watch this space'.
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