Gabe Newell’s company therefore has a titanic task in order to solve them and increase compatibility with the various games that exist on the Steam platform in order to increase the value.
Let’s not forget that the Steam Deck is a paradox in itself, since, on the one hand, it is a console and, on the other hand, it is based on PC games, which leads to a curious situation to say the least. , due to the fact that computer games are not optimized for a closed system in terms of hardware. In other words, its technical specifications do not change over time, which goes against the functioning of the market.
It should be borne in mind that the console, in order to be able to move PC games, uses an interpreter, Proton, which translates calls to the games system for Steam on Windows to the Linux-based Valve console operating system . However, this decision assumes that not all games are supported and not all games run at 100% and maximum performance.
Valve Update on Steam Deck and Proton 7
It’s because of it Valve has updated the Proton interpreter to version 7. which includes among others full support for AMD’s van Gogh APU, which is the one Valve uses in its Steam Deck. This increased game compatibility and increased the number of games supported on Linux under this interpreter, including the following:
- Year 1404
- Call of Juarez
- DCS World Steam Edition
- Disgaea 4 Complete+
- Dungeon Fighters Online
- Epic Roller Coaster XR
- eternal return
- Forza Horizon 5
- VR Gravity Sketch
- Rise of the Monster Hunter
- NecroVisionN
- Azure Nights
- Oceanhorn: monsters of the uncharted seas
- order of war
- Persona 4 Gold
- Evil resident 0
- Resident Evil Revelations 2
- Rocksmith edition 2014
- SCP: Secret Laboratory
- war groove
- War Tales
- Yakuza 4 Remastered
It is expected that the list of compatible games will continue to grow over time and little by little the already compatible games will work much better and more and more will be added over time to the list of playable games on the Valve console. However, Steam Deck compatibility issues will continue to exist, at least until developers make optimized versions of their games for the system.
In addition to compatibility improvements, also added improved anti-cheat in Proton 7 in order to avoid problems in online games. Although at present, Valve keeps many of them off the list of compatible games. Let’s not forget that Proton 7 isn’t just for Valve’s Steam Deck, but for general Linux users looking to play Windows games without having to install Redmond’s OS.
Urgent Native Games on Steam Deck
However, despite using Proton 7, ideally these would be native to Steam OS and therefore the interpreter would not be needed. It would therefore be best for developers to program their games natively for Steam OS. Even if his work to run the games in the best conditions on Steam OS would not be limited to that.
For example, they would also use a performance analyzer so that the graphics configuration is the most appropriate to achieve the perfect balance between image quality, resolution and frames per second. We also cannot forget the use of precompiled shaders for the platform, a common trick of closed hardware like consoles to gain frames by downloading said task to the CPU.
Optimizations on games already released on the market are not difficult to do and relatively cheap, the problem is that it is done in conversions of existing games on new platforms. Which means that these, when sold at full price, end up being very profitable. However, Valve can’t sell such updates if it doesn’t want to turn people against it and will have to convince various developers to make optimizations for their newly released and nascent hardware.
