As an example of a weird verified title, Baldur's Gate 3. Large sections of the game run at sub 15 FPS whilst this is still playable it's certainly not suitable for the verified category.
Yeah, performance is a very lacking part of the Verified badge. But this also applies to ProtonDB because if a game run perfectly on a system with dGPU, it will have a good rating. That's why we need to see actual reviews from a Steam Deck.
@@BrodieRobertson The problem is the heavy performance issues doesn't happen until Act 3 (lower city). And is "playable", if you ignore half of the city not being loaded...
@@kuil I'm not actually on steamdeck. But Proton isn't exclusive to steamdeck as much as linux as a whole. Controller inputs are easy enough to configure. But anti-cheats...
if you rename it to unoptimized, its implying that the game IS going to work. some games are 100% incompatible with linux, and if someone buys one such game, valve or the devs will be labeled as scammers
That's probably why they take a conservative approach to the ratings. Though they should add a new option of supported by the developer, which the dev can enable without Valve testing it.
@@blisphul8084there needs to be a "confirmed by developer" and "confirmed by Valve", and display both. If Valve says so, maybe they're wrong. If the dev says so, they might just be saying that so less more software. But if they both say it, I know the dev said so and Valve confirmed.
I've had stellar experiences opening tickets on the proton github. If the proton team is aware that someone actually wants to play something unsupported they do seem to actually work on it.
This reminds me siege circle. We say to ubisoft to enable anticheat on linux -> get ghosted -> ask again -> get told its deck incompatible -> it isnt only says "anticheat not configured" -> call them out -> and F'in get TOLD ITS NOT DECK COMPATIBLE.
If it's Ring-0 (aka kernel level) anticheat, you DO NOT want that. You have a open source kernel examined by tens of thousands of people looking for security flaws and stability issues, and working together to ensure the most stable system they are capable of creating. Ring-0 anticheat is taking that and adding some code written by 5 dudes in a dev crunch in 2 weeks on a couple pieces of hardware that happen to work with it, and MAYBE tested for another couple weeks on a few more hardware platforms. Now, if it's Valve that made it? Yeah, maybe. ...MAYBE.
the short period when the anticheat was working perfectly fine on linux makes it even funnier it was most likely an accident, but it proved that there is nothing stopping the game from running on linux
@@OhhCrapGuyseriously, right? Personally, I look at “Ring-0” anticheats as being no different than any other Root Kit There’s literally hundreds of thousands of games in the world. Why would I ever voluntarily Root Kit myself for a single game, when I could simply spend my time playing almost any other game in the entire world without one? It makes absolutely no sense to me, but unfortunately some of these titles have become extremely popular, and now there are millions of users with fundamentally compromised systems (Not to mention there will always be cheaters regardless, so these Root Kits are practically pointless. I think the main purpose of anticheat is to get rid of the blatant cheaters and give users a false sense of security… But for every cheater that gets caught, there are 10 more that didn’t because they’re not obvious about it. Physical access is total access, so even Ring-0 can easily be circumvented by those who are dedicated enough to cheating)
I recall that most Linux modes in anticheats are just completely disabling that anticheat for players on Linux (at least that's how EAC seems to do it)
As a non steamdeck users (although I would like to be one if they were sold here in Brazil) I mainly use proton DB in order to make sure that games will work on my system before buying them. I have never even seen Steam’s own verification for them anywhere…
Steam's rating is displayed on the game's store page somewhere on the right below language support etc. However it only specifies Steam Deck support, not Linux in general. So while it's probably decent in most cases, protondb is more accurate for Linux in general I would say.
I pre-ordered a deck, and have never even looked at the steam deck rating once. I only enabled the override to run everything and went from there. There have been issues, but never even once have i considered looking at official compatibility.
Lately I've been using the Deck for Zachtronics games, but also Factorio and Stray in the last year. I didn't like using it for FPS games due to controller input.
As a software developer, their use of the term "unsupported" is reasonable to me. Unsupported means "it may or may not work, I don't take responsibility for it". Think about it like if you are running a modern game on Pentium III and you encounter a problem. If you contact technical support they are going to say "sorry, we don't support that configuration". It doesn't mean you can't personally get it to work, just that the developer does not give that configuration any consideration and that customer support isn't going to help you...They don't provide support...it's unsupported :D I've worked on software where we provided minimum system requirements that really were hard requirements, but I've also had to tell people "technically what you are doing should work, but your hardware is no longer supported by the vendor and as such it is no longer supported by me".
They should just adopt a 5 tier compatibility rating like many emulators do: Perfect, minor issues, major issues but beatable, partly playable, unplayable, and unknown.
They could also allow user to rate the compatibility of the games like the normal rating system It would be very usefull to the the history of the rating so you know if things are getting better or not
The word "unsupported" to me says that it's not *supported*, it doesn't necessarily mean incompatible or "not working". Maybe Steam should introduce another level that's actually labeled "incompatible" meaning 100 % verified "not working" (due to anticheat, etc.). I use a bunch of software that's "unsupported" on Linux, that doesn't mean that it doesn't work through Wine. If it's actually "incompatible", I'll use a Windows VM (and pass through USB devices to the VM, etc.). EDIT: Then again, they do have "unknown", which to me *sounds* the same as "unsupported", even if they define it differently.
As a non-SteamDeck, but Linux gamer, I first take a glance at the rating on the Steam page. Because of how strict the requirements are, if a game is "verified", it usually means it will run fine and I don't need to do additional research into possible DRM, proton/wine configurations or launch options. If it isn't listed as verified, then I do additional research. I find it handy to save time if anything, and sometimes the reasons it lists for lack of support also help me know what to research in more detail.
Nope, Nixxes put up a statement regarding the rating of Ghost of Tsushima that the "unsupported" rating was entirely because of a single feature basically nobody caring about not working with the game (which I think is also just for the _official_ Proton, ProtonGE I think can do it)
I found it strange that they labled Ghost of Tsushima as unsupported just because the online portion requires PSN sign in, which requires Windows. The game is primarily single player, and the devs went out of their way to make sure it ran well on the Steam Deck. Seems like it should at least be "playable" with an explanation, rather than "unsupported due to anti-cheat". At least they link to the dev comments for an explanation, because the single player runs very well.
I can't tell you how many times I've seen people complain that Easy-Anti-Cheat games don't work on linux. False... EAC games *DO* work on linux... I was just playing some BattleBit yesterday. Make sure you add the EAC (and BattleEye) runtimes from Tools under your Steam Library. Also note that nProtect used by Helldivers II is supposedly an invasive kernel level anti-cheat, and yet it works out of the box in linux, without even tweaking anything.
There's a plugin that shows the protondb rating right on the game page on your Deck. Or at least there was when I last had plugins installed on my deck. My three most recent Deck games are Ape Out, Celeste and 14 Minesweeper Variants (the last of which is a lot more fun than it sounds)
That reminds me me that my most-played games on the Steam Deck aren't from Steam: - GNOME Mahjongg - GNOME Mines - Quadrapassel (nee GNOMEtris) - KPatience - Quake II (Yamagi) - Pingus (Lemmings clone) all free flatpaks, except Pingus, which I have installed via Nix
@@GSBarlev I'd recommend 14 Minesweeper Variants over regular minesweeper, even if you're not going to play any of the variants. The game guarantees that every level can be finished without making a single guess. (There's even a recommended setting that disallows guessing all together.) That alone makes it worth the couple of bucks...
I'm in a facebook group about the steam deck, lots of middle aged people in it, i read "wait, you can play unsupported games??" And "wait, you can install games outside of steam ??" Way too often
0:40 I think that's a little thing we call having an ego, Brodie. There's still plenty of people out there who hate Linux for no good reason, and some of those people include developers.
I think it’s more the fact that Linux is both harder to support, and far easier for the user to customize I don’t think their Root Kits would prevent Linux cheating for a second (too easy to circumvent), and most would not be willing to install it anyway (huge security risk… Why the hell would I voluntarily Root Kit myself to play just one game?) 🤷
@@Muhahahahaz Not necessarily. No one is making dev studios include kernel level spyware rootkits in their games to prevent users from cheating. I wouldn't buy these on Windows, and I wouldn't buy them on Linux either. The solution is worse than the cheating. When it comes to single player games, they typically just work with little extra work being required by the devs, although things like UI and settings tweaks are always nice. Then you get people like Tim Sweeney who is just a nob and thinks that Linux users are made up of pirates and Gabe Newell.
I don't look at it as I don't have a Steamdeck. However, Protondb is such an amazing resource for fixing problems. Earlier this year before I switched to Linux, the thing holding me back was gaming. Someone showed me Protondb and I was shocked. Needless to say I made the switch, and outside of a few issues, like Persona 3 Reload's reflections tanking the hell out of performance, or the FF16 demo being odd. Gaming on Linux has honestly been no problem.
Same here, I was so used to hear "but you can't run games on linux" that discovering that actually most games run fine now was a shock. Me: I'm so sick of Windows... I've been wishing that I could just ditch it for 20 years but... gaming 😭 Friend: Already told you a dozen times, you can run games on linux now. Me: Still don't believe you. Besides I don't want to be limited to a few dozen native linux games even if there are any. Friend: No you can even run Windows games on linux now. Me: WHAAAAAAT? Friend links Protondb Me: WITCHCRAAAAAAAFT
@@quaesitrix881 Basically me as well. Windows XP was the last time I really liked Windows, 7 was okay, but 10 and 11 have been shit. I was messing around on Windows 3.1 as a 4 year old in '92 though lol, so I've seen it get worse and worse. I feel bad for those who need it for professional work.
@@Karn0010 Awww a fellow Windows 3.1 kid 🥲 Windows 95/98 were really cool when they came out but even then they already went "we're the ones deciding how you should use your computer and what you're allowed to do" so I can't say there ever was one Windows version I unreservedly liked, for me there always was a huge amount of frustration at not being able to do what I wanted without having to fight my OS at every step. But it definitely has come a long way in sheer awfulness and anti-user features, and you're right it must be hell to be forced to use 11 for work 😬
i just want to note, every time a compatibility review is completed by valve, the review will be set to public either a week later, or if the developer manually accepts the review however the developer can counter the claim, multiple times. every single time the developer does this the week long timer restarts, so if an update for a game breaks it due to anti-cheat it can very easily take up to 3-4 weeks even if the developer isn't evil in my opinion, this is a pretty big problem, and i hate how hidden this information is - i've never ever heard people talk about it
It has been explained officially by Valve that Deck compatibility is solely for Steam Deck & not a direct Linux Compatibility metric like ProtonDB: Unsupported does not mean the game won't work on Steam Deck, just that it "**may not be a good experience on Deck**" or "**may be a better experience on Desktop**". Incompatibility with Proton is a big reason, but is not the sole reason for a game to be given this mark. Verified just means the experience is Seamless on Steam Deck that requires no user intervention. Deck Verified will never authorize or suggest 3rd party Proton versions, and if user creation was allowed people would do that a lot. Valve will never do a user curated system & it would be more costly to moderate & verify authenticity of other users. I've seen people using Proton 3.16 on Kernel 6.6 and complaining about modern games that work 100% fine on Modern Proton...
As another user said, ProtonDB is a great resource for fixing problems & not for telling the average user if games work or not. But ofc ProtonDB is good for that too.
"Valve will never do a user curated system & it would be more costly to moderate & verify authenticity of other users." There's no need to. Just look at the review section, it's a hellhole there, but it's still better than nothing.
I actually disagree with you and, while there _are_ problems, I don't think it needs any fundamental changes. For one, using the term "Unsuppored" is completely accurate for this. All that word means is that they won't provide support for the game if you have issues. Technically, the issue is that Valve is using the wrong definition for the term. I think that some simple updates to the documentation and default explanations would go a long way there, but the term itself is fine. Second, "Unsupported" doesn't _always_ mean it won't run at all. Way back in the day, when I first got my steam deck (just a few months after it launched), I tried a game listed as unsupported. It _did_ launch and seemed to be "Playable"... right up until the game froze / crashed on one particular edge case. From what I can tell, Valve gives a game the "Unsupported" rating if there's *any* kind of issue that isn't listed in their "Playable vs Verified" checklist. If there's a black texture where there isn't supposed to be, or some side functionality breaks, that's enough to get the "Unsupported" rating. Granted, their documentation should better explain that if that's their criteria, but either way, it is worth noting. I think the issue of the fully "Playable" games being rated "Unsupported" is just caused by Proton getting updates, and the games not being re-reviewed. I know the documentation _says_ they'll be re-reviewed, but I can understand games slipping through. There are tons of games launching on Steam every day, so I can understand not every game will get the attention from Valve needed to be rated correctly. IIRC, there _is_ a way for developers / publishers to request their game be re-rated, but that also requires the developers / publishers to pay attention to it, and even then, I think the game needs to hit certain sales / ratings metrics before that option becomes available so Valve doesn't get spammed. Games being stuck with old ratings is just going to be a fact with this kind of system (even with ProtonDB to an extent), and there's not *much* that can be done to improve it. I think you proposed some good ideas for metrics Valve can use to prioritize what games need re-ratings, but it will never be a full fix, and it's important to understand that. Lastly, there's one thing that Valve's rating indicates that ProtonDB's rating can't tell me without delving into the individual reviews: "Will the game *just work* with the default setup?" ProtonDB aggregates reviews on various devices (with different graphics cards) using various revisions of Proton (eg. Proton GE), and combines *all* of them into a single "Platinum / Bold / Silver / Bronze / Borked" rating. With Valve's rating, I know it's based exclusively on how it works on the Steam Deck's hardware using Valve's official Proton. Knowing whether I can get a game working correctly by eg. installing a different version of Proton is useful, which is why I will still use ProtonDB, but I also think Valve's rating serves a purpose that ProtonDB's overall rating does not convey very well.
PSA: late '90s 2D RTS games (Starcraft, C&C, AoE, Emperor: Battle for Dune) are *really fun* on the Steam Deck. You can either download the community layout, bind your own hotkeys to the Deck's billion buttons or just play in "point and click" mode. C&C/RA and SC are also free, and it's super trivial to bypass the EA and Blizzard launchers just by pointing the path directly to the game EXEs.
Oooh, Ys Origins. I played through it flawlessly on Ubuntu about a year or two ago. Awesome game. :) And yes, I can recommend the entire series, although Origins, Memories of Celceta and Lacrimosa of Dana hold the top spots. Monstrum Nox is awesome too, Nordics will be interesting.
It's worth noting that protonDB ratings can sometimes be wildly inaccurate or out of date Spelunky 2 for instance is (or was for ages) marked as silver, but it runs flawlessly with zero tweaking, which is stated as such in the user comments in that very same page. It feels like the community is aware these games work well, yet the badge which is the thing you actually see most is inaccurate
ProtonDB is a great place to check to see if your game is playable on Linux. Sonic Adventure DX says it was unsupported on Steam Deck officially, while ProtonDB gave it a playable ranking.
Before I make a steam purchase I always check ProtonDB and only sometimes really notice the steam deck verified mark. (even for natively "supported" games, since those Linux ports can sometimes be crap too)
It would probably be a good idea to show the last time it was tested officially; and the average number of Deck players monthly or something like that, and not just the standard label. And probably also would good to have something like a combination of manual voting and number of launch attempts and/or hours played by all players combined, used as one of the factors to sort which games should be re-tested.
i completely disagree. as an consumer, i rather not purchase an game, because it was marked as unsupported despite the fact it was supported, than purchase something then end up not being able to played because it was miss labeled as supported. the company will lost an sale? though luck, its much better to do what is better for consumers than for companies, not to mention that people would complain with the company who made the game, with valve, ask for refund of the deck (if they purchased it specifically to play that game), refund the game, give a lot of headeach. Not to mention, an game being miss labeled as unsuported dont mean the player will not purchase it to play elsewere, so its not really an sale that got lost. as for valve making it an colaborative effort with proton... No. that will just introduce the mistakes of protonDB on steam itself. many people test the game for a few minutes, never bother to finish it and mark as playable, then someone play a bit more the game crash and complain its not really playable, imagine that on the existing steam rating system... we should expect an proper Q/A on the steam rating system, and the only way of doing that is if valve make it by thenselves.
Also, it should have a feature that users can essentiallly archive reviews that are no longer true due to an update. The bug does need to be known, and there needs to be some kind of evidence, but thats it. Or that a Bug is not Linux specific.
It would probably be good to mention against which version of SteamOS/ Proton a game has been tested, with a bar on the top stating which versions you currently run, staying in view while you scroll through the game support list. It would also be great if more developers took Linux more seriously as a gaming platform and release true Linux versions that have a higher chance of being Steam Deck compatible.
The funny thing is I actually generally find that the Windows versions run better through Proton than the Linux ports natively (this is especially true of Unity games).
I've been thinking about this for a few days now and … there kinda needs to be a fourth category. They have verified, playable, and unsupported. Okay, but there's a difference between it doesn't work right and nobody's tested it. And it would be really good if protondb ratings were included as well. It also wouldn't take very long for protondb ratings to include questions like whether or not it is fully controllable with a controller or has very small fonts … that sort of thing. Then all you have to do is default to showing protondb ratings for people who have actually used it on the steamdeck. Basically more info is good, provided we know it comes from other users. That won't fix things that are weirdly verified when maybe playable would be a better description, but … more info is a good start.
Since ya pointed out HoloCure... I believe it deserves a Playable badge: it doesn't do On-Screen Keyboard pop-up as the game asks you to put your profile name (requiring a manual shortcut key to pop it up, otherwise: you can't bypass it completely.) and it only shows Keyboard/Mouse prompts beyond Remapping...even tho... *HoloCure has Controller Support* .
Valve should've set as "Verified" only games that had native Linux ports, or at the very least created an extra ranking called "Optimized" that was Verified but with a native (and decent) Linux executable *and* gave it a lower dev tax as long as it was kept that way. I'm so fucking tired of everyone using Proton as a crutch when it was never meant to be
10:44 probably valve already do that... but it take a lot of time to test 20.000 games, hell, valve have 100.000+ games on steam, the ammount of games grow faster than they can test it, imagine test it twice (one on windows other on linux to see if there is any difference), and then an new proton version is relase and they have to test it again to see if the existing bugs got squashed...
Nothing wrong with an unsupported catagory for things they didn't verify yet, but the meaning of it should be: "we did not test this, so we just don't know if it works and how well it works" Things which clearly don't work should be in their own group: "incompatible"
On Steam Deck, there is a mod to add ProtonDB badges to the library page. I wish it could be also added to steam desktop as well, since it would be faster to preview the state as well as go to the game's page on ProtonDB if that badge was also a hyperlink to it.
The big issue I have with the "Steam Deck Verification" is that it has different priorities than a more general "Linux Proton Verification." Primarily the necessity of text size and controller requirements. As an aside, I remember when Steam first officially brought itself to Linux and had all of the modern (at the time) Valve games, along with a few games from other developers to make *Native Linux Versions.* One of these was Killing Floor 1, there were some graphical bugs (invisible enemies being clearly visible) but perfectly playable. Jump to the modern day and, I can't change the resolution of the game, at all, and it even bugs out my dual monitor setup. I don't know how a game that was a Day-One Linux supported game, but now, with incredible compatibility tools, this has fallen to the wayside. And because it "has an official Linux version, i can't seem to force the Windows version to install so i can use Proton.
Steam deck and proton is amazing. I didn't had some much fun with a piece of electric equipment since HTC/Google G1. Recently I've been trying Black and White and The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection from EA store. The sims 2 works better than under windows, but EA App is a pain in the butt. Black and White works as well with just no CD patch. Proton has amazing game compatibility.
Valve should just ditch the official curation and make it a crowdsourced feature similar to the Tag system. You can report a compatibility rating _IF IT'S "VERIFIED",_ if it's marked as "playable" or "unsupported", best you can do is read their motivation for that score (which, for "unsupported", is "valve is working on getting this game to work well").
I think both the "Verified" and "Unsupported" are categories that should be very well maintained. When a buyer reads "Verified", they're expecting a near perfect experience with the game, even if low graphics or 30fps. It doesn't feel good for buyers when a game like God of War, a game with a memory leak that causes the game to crash every 20 minutes, is marked as Verified. It certainly sucks for the developers who have their game working near flawlessly and have it marked as unsupported, who's gonna buy that? Not me. ProtonDB is definitely the way to go. I wonder if there's a decky plugin to put a ProtonDB badge on the game store page. That would be massive.
It's so funny when the game is marked unsupported on steam but the protondb badge has it as Gold, but then the comments on protondb have like a long list of issues or steps needed to make it work. Or the current game I'm playing is "unknown" on steam and "Platinum" on protondb
If I see “verified” with a green check I would expect the developer / publisher had made sure it worked properly as intended, and “playable” to mean controls and graphics etc works but maybe not performing 100% or controls have been pre-customized to work but not officially, at least when it comes to playing on game consoles.
You’re missing something. Unsupported should mean unsupported by the dev. If a game dev doesn’t want their game supported on steam deck because they don’t want to provide support to steam deck users. Regardless of if the game works or not. I can kinda understand that. If I make a game and I don’t want to support the steam deck, valve has no rights to tell people it is supported on steam deck. Unfortunately a lot of publishers don’t care about the steam deck and also want the verified badge taken down then that’s their right. There are other things than working and how well that go into valve being able to put that badge on their game.
Tbh, I also find myself mostly checking protondb for deck compatibility as I used to before getting steam deck. And mostly because of their comment sections where can be described those little tweaks which makes game runs better (or at least just runs). Oh and last game I played on deck is Dwarf Fortress. Actually works pretty good, but my right thumb began to hurt and I switched to laptop)
a option for devs to add playable tag to their games, valve can then just test it and maybe mark it officially to verified or playable (with some sort of check from valve).
Same I finished 1 of the story paths even! ! Started a 2nd run on a higher difficult with a friend too, and have played and beaten a few other Ys games
TheExileFox The Trails games are wild, you get really attached to the characters and story! I'm basically caught up aside from finishing Daybreak, it's definitely a journey
If a game is played a lot on Steam Deck and is marked as Unsupported, then the system should change that automatically to Playable. Or show how many Steam Deck players have played the game that matches player time on Windows or something like that. They could determine these things algorithmically.
4:30 Actually, DOOM ran perfectly fine on the Steam Deck despite the rating before the update to DOOM + DOOM 2. For some reason, DOOM 2 was rated but not DOOM. I'm not sure why they didn't rate DOOM when they obviously went ahead and rared DOOM 2
IMO, some of the bigger problems come with "Verified" games with anti-cheat. Apex Legends has borked their anti-cheat a couple times and gotten people on Linux banned. Supposedly some accounts were reinstated, but some weren't. Another example is Battlefield, some people in the subreddit bought the game since it was Verified. Now, Battlefield is rolling out their own anti-cheat that won't be Linux compatible.
I think Valve needs to come up with a way to only allow steam deck users to only see games that work on the steam deck. I don’t like that fact that I can see the games that don’t work on the steam it gets my hopes up for no reason. I see it and get excited just to click on it and find out it don’t work.
My experience: I in some cases had more issues with playable games (shadow of the TR), than unsupported games (Batman Arkham Origins works flawlessly). So to be is it case by case basis. I also think that verified games with optimized settings should not hide the settings menu from user (which can be brought back with command line params SteamDeck=0 %command%).
I don't think unsupported is a bad name for the category because for a mass appeal device like SteamDeck I think erring on the side of caution is the better choice, but I definitely agree there should be a hard "Incompatible" category for games that just plain cannot be made to work.
I don't actually look at this stuff unless the game is having issues the majority of the time I just run the game and it works. It does help that I find most versions of anti-cheat to be overstepping the line into spyware anyway so that crap was never going on my computer anyway.
Played a lot of "This Means Warp" on my steamdeck, playable official rating, but funnily I actually find the controls a little easier to use on the deck, compared to keyboard and mouse xD
Honestly I just ignore it, I even use a decky plugin into remove the badges. You just have to know what to expect with the deck performance-wise. But damn do I miss playing certain games they don't even compatible due to anti cheat. Hopefully one day Valve can work something out, specifically the call of duty series.
I got several games in my library that are marked unsupported, but actually work. Usually proton updated and suddenly everything works, but they were not relabeled. And then there's games like USC: Counterforce which doesn't even launch. Intermittent problem, as I've had it launch in the past, on previous installs.
I don’t have a huge issue with unsupported. Keep in mind Valve is targeting the Windows audience with this. Windows users do not like unnecessary tinkering. They expect the default vanilla experience to just work with no modifications. Your call for “unsupported” to be changed comes from a very Linux user point of view. I’d argue that unsupported is the best possible term. For one thing it ensures windows users who expect not to need to tinker with anything won’t have a bad time with Linux and abandon it. On the flip side it also encourages devs to remove those barriers to being able to play their game and overall improves the quality of the library for everyone. Linux users are still free to tinker, but hopefully in the next 10-20 years we won’t need to just to play a game. The Window’s Stockholm Syndrome is having to put up with whatever annoying privacy invading stuff Microsoft pushes through. The Linux Stockholm Syndrome is having to tinker to get basic things working. We’re used to it so we don’t even think about it. But not everyone lives this way.
Stardew Valley, BeamNG Drive, some PS1 emu, Abiotic Factor, WereCleaner, No Man's Sky, and I even just downloaded the first two Borderlands to play some time in the near future. It's quite literally my main gaming machine now, everything above but the Borderlands I haven't played on it yet gets above 30fps at minimum with very few or no hiccups. Probably the worst one was Abiotic Factor, I did a full playthrough pre-Crush Depth and it had some areas that would dip to the low twenties late game, but those areas have had optimization overhauls for Crush Depth, so it should be better now, if not 30fps or higher locked. Also have to mention that a good chunk of those titles are not verified, and a couple were considered unknown or unplayable when I started playing them only to be upgraded to playable more recently. It's not a perfect system but it does make a good guesstimation for how a game might run before you try it yourself. Automod detected BeamNG as a link and wiped my comment, I used a spelace instead of a period on it so maybe it'll fly now 🙃 Sucks that you have to go that far to keep scam and phish bots out.
going to go on a limb and say devs not supporting Linux is a simple lack of confidence. Starting with Linux and porting after is way easier than the other way around, and usually more secure because of relying on open source instead of proprietary garbage.
tbh my process is the same as it's always been with PC: buy the game, install it and try it, check the wiki if I have any issues and see if they're resolvable (in this case ProtonDB) and if I can't get it to work, refund it. The only game I've had to refund so far was the Devil May Cry trilogy because the cutscenes used an unsupported codec and I couldn't watch them. I ended up just buying them on Switch instead because they're ancient. DMC4 and 5 ran fantastically on Linux. Also I'm gaming on a Linux desktop so I really really really don't care about things like "text is small" or "launcher needs a mouse" or even "the Steam Deck's hardware is too weaksauce to handle this". These do not impact my playability in the slightest, but obv a game just flat out not launching on Linux would.
It's easy to say "just look at ProtonDB instead", but I can't filter my library by ProtonDB status when I'm viewing it on my deck. Ever single game lookup is a multistep process that basically requires a PC (or at least phone) and is just cumbersome. And no, I'm not setting my steam library to "public" I Personally haven't had any games misclassified, but I do agree that some sort of feedback or report system is simply required. Maybe just have an option for the "report" button allow feedback of this type? But that's currently intended for games violating rules of some sort, so also doesn't quite fit. Or just add a button next to the rating, letting people provide feedback there..
so kay yu (the main dev of holocure and holo x break) recently tweeted about this topic here is what he said (quote tweeting 4:16) " @FreyaHolmer Oh I have experience with this For Steam Deck compatibility, games are reviewed and needs to pass a whole bunch of tests, some of which are completely arbitrary or stupidly specific for no reason, and if it fails those, it's "unsupported" even though it runs perfectly fine. " " HoloCure is "unsupported" for Steam Deck, and the reason they gave was that the game's graphics settings aren't configurable enough.... that's it It plays without any other issue. So yeah, just wanted to say that that steam deck compatibility tag is usually pretty inaccurate " " For Holo X Break on Steam Deck, we failed one of the tests for "the game sometimes shows mouse, keyboard, or non-steam-deck controller icons" i'm like, bruh "
I use Proton DB all the time, but, I've only ever run into one game that didn't work at all and it's broken on Windows too. I got a game for free with trading card sales and it was Magical Drop V. Devs abandoned it because they lost the license. Time to set sail.
I think a lot of issues could fixed by adding a "Untested" tag, and leaving the Unsupported tag intact. Because devs don't make the anticheat work with Linux and Proton. Edit : five seconds after when I paused he came to the same conclusion lol. Great minds think alike, but fools seldom differ.
I don't have a Deck but I check to see if it's verified or playble to see if it has full controller support ticked because there are many games that are listed as Steam Deck verified/playable with control criteria ticked but devs never listed the game as full or partial controller support.
Both Halo MCC and Infinite works flawlessly with Proton (MCC had some issues and took 343 a year to fix, but they did fix it). Halo is the one big franchise Microsoft owns (since first release)
As an example of a weird verified title, Baldur's Gate 3. Large sections of the game run at sub 15 FPS whilst this is still playable it's certainly not suitable for the verified category.
verified basically means "Runs to completion and renders the correct glyphs" iirc.
Yeah, performance is a very lacking part of the Verified badge. But this also applies to ProtonDB because if a game run perfectly on a system with dGPU, it will have a good rating. That's why we need to see actual reviews from a Steam Deck.
@@stanzacosmi one of the criteria for verified is a default graphics profile suitable for the steam deck
@@BrodieRobertson The problem is the heavy performance issues doesn't happen until Act 3 (lower city). And is "playable", if you ignore half of the city not being loaded...
@@BrodieRobertson You can't even trust protondb anymore, kartrider: drift is gold but it crashes before the first logo finishes.
I will forever be frustrated with games marked as playable, but have regressions or anti-cheat changes that breaks their playability.
For me it’s when a game isn’t good when using the steam deck controller inputs or requires the touchscreen to be used as a mouse.
@@kuil I'm not actually on steamdeck. But Proton isn't exclusive to steamdeck as much as linux as a whole. Controller inputs are easy enough to configure. But anti-cheats...
if you rename it to unoptimized, its implying that the game IS going to work. some games are 100% incompatible with linux, and if someone buys one such game, valve or the devs will be labeled as scammers
That's probably why they take a conservative approach to the ratings. Though they should add a new option of supported by the developer, which the dev can enable without Valve testing it.
@@blisphul8084there needs to be a "confirmed by developer" and "confirmed by Valve", and display both. If Valve says so, maybe they're wrong. If the dev says so, they might just be saying that so less more software. But if they both say it, I know the dev said so and Valve confirmed.
“Unvalidated”
Uncertified
Unverified seems sensible
developers: we don't enable anticheats on linux because of security reasons.
*meanwhile 90% of cheaters only use windows*
Call of duty for example, Modern Warfare 3 is full of hackers LOL.
Linux experts: I don't allow your kernel level anticheat. Also for security reasons.
Wdym 90% use windows? Are you implying that there are enough Linux players to represent 10% of cheaters?
@@froggyman_ The Black Ops 6 beta has cheaters.
It's honestly impressive how bad some anti-cheat is.
@@bleack8701 I do believe that too, 10% is too much, I might had exaggerated the percentage
for me, unsupported means that if the game breaks no one will do anything about it
I've had stellar experiences opening tickets on the proton github. If the proton team is aware that someone actually wants to play something unsupported they do seem to actually work on it.
This reminds me siege circle.
We say to ubisoft to enable anticheat on linux -> get ghosted -> ask again -> get told its deck incompatible -> it isnt only says "anticheat not configured" -> call them out -> and F'in get TOLD ITS NOT DECK COMPATIBLE.
If it's Ring-0 (aka kernel level) anticheat, you DO NOT want that. You have a open source kernel examined by tens of thousands of people looking for security flaws and stability issues, and working together to ensure the most stable system they are capable of creating.
Ring-0 anticheat is taking that and adding some code written by 5 dudes in a dev crunch in 2 weeks on a couple pieces of hardware that happen to work with it, and MAYBE tested for another couple weeks on a few more hardware platforms.
Now, if it's Valve that made it? Yeah, maybe.
...MAYBE.
the short period when the anticheat was working perfectly fine on linux makes it even funnier
it was most likely an accident, but it proved that there is nothing stopping the game from running on linux
@@OhhCrapGuyseriously, right?
Personally, I look at “Ring-0” anticheats as being no different than any other Root Kit
There’s literally hundreds of thousands of games in the world. Why would I ever voluntarily Root Kit myself for a single game, when I could simply spend my time playing almost any other game in the entire world without one?
It makes absolutely no sense to me, but unfortunately some of these titles have become extremely popular, and now there are millions of users with fundamentally compromised systems
(Not to mention there will always be cheaters regardless, so these Root Kits are practically pointless. I think the main purpose of anticheat is to get rid of the blatant cheaters and give users a false sense of security… But for every cheater that gets caught, there are 10 more that didn’t because they’re not obvious about it. Physical access is total access, so even Ring-0 can easily be circumvented by those who are dedicated enough to cheating)
I recall that most Linux modes in anticheats are just completely disabling that anticheat for players on Linux (at least that's how EAC seems to do it)
As far as I'm concerned ubisoft games not running on linux is a feature of linux that I appreciate.
As a non steamdeck users (although I would like to be one if they were sold here in Brazil) I mainly use proton DB in order to make sure that games will work on my system before buying them. I have never even seen Steam’s own verification for them anywhere…
Steam's rating is displayed on the game's store page somewhere on the right below language support etc. However it only specifies Steam Deck support, not Linux in general. So while it's probably decent in most cases, protondb is more accurate for Linux in general I would say.
I pre-ordered a deck, and have never even looked at the steam deck rating once. I only enabled the override to run everything and went from there.
There have been issues, but never even once have i considered looking at official compatibility.
Lately I've been using the Deck for Zachtronics games, but also Factorio and Stray in the last year. I didn't like using it for FPS games due to controller input.
As a software developer, their use of the term "unsupported" is reasonable to me. Unsupported means "it may or may not work, I don't take responsibility for it".
Think about it like if you are running a modern game on Pentium III and you encounter a problem. If you contact technical support they are going to say "sorry, we don't support that configuration". It doesn't mean you can't personally get it to work, just that the developer does not give that configuration any consideration and that customer support isn't going to help you...They don't provide support...it's unsupported :D
I've worked on software where we provided minimum system requirements that really were hard requirements, but I've also had to tell people "technically what you are doing should work, but your hardware is no longer supported by the vendor and as such it is no longer supported by me".
They should just adopt a 5 tier compatibility rating like many emulators do: Perfect, minor issues, major issues but beatable, partly playable, unplayable, and unknown.
that seems like a good idea. The current "verified" and "playable" don't really give any information about how well it runs
this is what i love about emulator compatibility ratings.
Too complicated for the average user
They could also allow user to rate the compatibility of the games like the normal rating system
It would be very usefull to the the history of the rating so you know if things are getting better or not
@@martinferrand4711 users are not necessarily aware of all the criteria used to differentiate playable from verified.
The word "unsupported" to me says that it's not *supported*, it doesn't necessarily mean incompatible or "not working". Maybe Steam should introduce another level that's actually labeled "incompatible" meaning 100 % verified "not working" (due to anticheat, etc.).
I use a bunch of software that's "unsupported" on Linux, that doesn't mean that it doesn't work through Wine. If it's actually "incompatible", I'll use a Windows VM (and pass through USB devices to the VM, etc.).
EDIT: Then again, they do have "unknown", which to me *sounds* the same as "unsupported", even if they define it differently.
As a non-SteamDeck, but Linux gamer, I first take a glance at the rating on the Steam page. Because of how strict the requirements are, if a game is "verified", it usually means it will run fine and I don't need to do additional research into possible DRM, proton/wine configurations or launch options.
If it isn't listed as verified, then I do additional research.
I find it handy to save time if anything, and sometimes the reasons it lists for lack of support also help me know what to research in more detail.
IMO unsupported means "developers don't support the game in this platform", that doesn't imply "It's not gonna run here"
Nope, Nixxes put up a statement regarding the rating of Ghost of Tsushima that the "unsupported" rating was entirely because of a single feature basically nobody caring about not working with the game (which I think is also just for the _official_ Proton, ProtonGE I think can do it)
No it doesn't, many Windows-only games like Elden Ring have the highest rating for the Steam Deck.
@@SaHaRaSquad Elden Ring works fine on linux through proton.
I found it strange that they labled Ghost of Tsushima as unsupported just because the online portion requires PSN sign in, which requires Windows. The game is primarily single player, and the devs went out of their way to make sure it ran well on the Steam Deck.
Seems like it should at least be "playable" with an explanation, rather than "unsupported due to anti-cheat". At least they link to the dev comments for an explanation, because the single player runs very well.
That's missing functionality, buyers may request refund.
@@sergeykish They should absolutely point that out, but flat out "unsupported" seems excessive.
I can't tell you how many times I've seen people complain that Easy-Anti-Cheat games don't work on linux.
False... EAC games *DO* work on linux... I was just playing some BattleBit yesterday.
Make sure you add the EAC (and BattleEye) runtimes from Tools under your Steam Library.
Also note that nProtect used by Helldivers II is supposedly an invasive kernel level anti-cheat, and yet it works out of the box in linux, without even tweaking anything.
Yep, Elden Ring uses EAC and runs just fine.
And EAC loads way faster on LINUX.
There's a plugin that shows the protondb rating right on the game page on your Deck. Or at least there was when I last had plugins installed on my deck.
My three most recent Deck games are Ape Out, Celeste and 14 Minesweeper Variants (the last of which is a lot more fun than it sounds)
That reminds me me that my most-played games on the Steam Deck aren't from Steam:
- GNOME Mahjongg
- GNOME Mines
- Quadrapassel (nee GNOMEtris)
- KPatience
- Quake II (Yamagi)
- Pingus (Lemmings clone)
all free flatpaks, except Pingus, which I have installed via Nix
@@GSBarlev I'd recommend 14 Minesweeper Variants over regular minesweeper, even if you're not going to play any of the variants. The game guarantees that every level can be finished without making a single guess. (There's even a recommended setting that disallows guessing all together.) That alone makes it worth the couple of bucks...
@@GSBarlevThey require practice and are progressively difficult, they are not complex.
You might like them (usually not right away),
Koules
Cave9
@@jasper265 Hey, that's a quality recommendation! I'm only playing the demo but it's good. It's a real thinker!
@@jasper265 Stellar recommendation with 14MV! I have only tried the demo so far and it's really good... challenging, but good!
I'm in a facebook group about the steam deck, lots of middle aged people in it, i read "wait, you can play unsupported games??" And "wait, you can install games outside of steam ??" Way too often
They're learning, cut them a break
Many people buying it are used to gaming consoles, not Linux.
0:40 I think that's a little thing we call having an ego, Brodie. There's still plenty of people out there who hate Linux for no good reason, and some of those people include developers.
I think it’s more the fact that Linux is both harder to support, and far easier for the user to customize
I don’t think their Root Kits would prevent Linux cheating for a second (too easy to circumvent), and most would not be willing to install it anyway (huge security risk… Why the hell would I voluntarily Root Kit myself to play just one game?) 🤷
@@Muhahahahaz Not necessarily. No one is making dev studios include kernel level spyware rootkits in their games to prevent users from cheating. I wouldn't buy these on Windows, and I wouldn't buy them on Linux either. The solution is worse than the cheating. When it comes to single player games, they typically just work with little extra work being required by the devs, although things like UI and settings tweaks are always nice. Then you get people like Tim Sweeney who is just a nob and thinks that Linux users are made up of pirates and Gabe Newell.
I don't look at it as I don't have a Steamdeck. However, Protondb is such an amazing resource for fixing problems. Earlier this year before I switched to Linux, the thing holding me back was gaming. Someone showed me Protondb and I was shocked. Needless to say I made the switch, and outside of a few issues, like Persona 3 Reload's reflections tanking the hell out of performance, or the FF16 demo being odd. Gaming on Linux has honestly been no problem.
Same here, I was so used to hear "but you can't run games on linux" that discovering that actually most games run fine now was a shock.
Me: I'm so sick of Windows... I've been wishing that I could just ditch it for 20 years but... gaming 😭
Friend: Already told you a dozen times, you can run games on linux now.
Me: Still don't believe you. Besides I don't want to be limited to a few dozen native linux games even if there are any.
Friend: No you can even run Windows games on linux now.
Me: WHAAAAAAT?
Friend links Protondb
Me: WITCHCRAAAAAAAFT
@@quaesitrix881 Basically me as well. Windows XP was the last time I really liked Windows, 7 was okay, but 10 and 11 have been shit. I was messing around on Windows 3.1 as a 4 year old in '92 though lol, so I've seen it get worse and worse. I feel bad for those who need it for professional work.
@@Karn0010 Awww a fellow Windows 3.1 kid 🥲 Windows 95/98 were really cool when they came out but even then they already went "we're the ones deciding how you should use your computer and what you're allowed to do" so I can't say there ever was one Windows version I unreservedly liked, for me there always was a huge amount of frustration at not being able to do what I wanted without having to fight my OS at every step. But it definitely has come a long way in sheer awfulness and anti-user features, and you're right it must be hell to be forced to use 11 for work 😬
I think utilizing the community is a good idea. Steam should have an option to show the relevant ProtonDB page of a game on its store page.
IIRC there's a Decky plugin to show ProtonDB ratings in the store.
i just want to note, every time a compatibility review is completed by valve, the review will be set to public either a week later, or if the developer manually accepts the review
however the developer can counter the claim, multiple times. every single time the developer does this the week long timer restarts, so if an update for a game breaks it due to anti-cheat it can very easily take up to 3-4 weeks even if the developer isn't evil
in my opinion, this is a pretty big problem, and i hate how hidden this information is - i've never ever heard people talk about it
This is why we need to tie reviews to versions of a game.
It has been explained officially by Valve that Deck compatibility is solely for Steam Deck & not a direct Linux Compatibility metric like ProtonDB:
Unsupported does not mean the game won't work on Steam Deck, just that it "**may not be a good experience on Deck**" or "**may be a better experience on Desktop**".
Incompatibility with Proton is a big reason, but is not the sole reason for a game to be given this mark.
Verified just means the experience is Seamless on Steam Deck that requires no user intervention.
Deck Verified will never authorize or suggest 3rd party Proton versions, and if user creation was allowed people would do that a lot.
Valve will never do a user curated system & it would be more costly to moderate & verify authenticity of other users.
I've seen people using Proton 3.16 on Kernel 6.6 and complaining about modern games that work 100% fine on Modern Proton...
As another user said, ProtonDB is a great resource for fixing problems & not for telling the average user if games work or not.
But ofc ProtonDB is good for that too.
Deck verified isn't correct on the Steam Deck, that's the point of the video
"Valve will never do a user curated system & it would be more costly to moderate & verify authenticity of other users."
There's no need to. Just look at the review section, it's a hellhole there, but it's still better than nothing.
I actually disagree with you and, while there _are_ problems, I don't think it needs any fundamental changes.
For one, using the term "Unsuppored" is completely accurate for this. All that word means is that they won't provide support for the game if you have issues. Technically, the issue is that Valve is using the wrong definition for the term. I think that some simple updates to the documentation and default explanations would go a long way there, but the term itself is fine.
Second, "Unsupported" doesn't _always_ mean it won't run at all. Way back in the day, when I first got my steam deck (just a few months after it launched), I tried a game listed as unsupported. It _did_ launch and seemed to be "Playable"... right up until the game froze / crashed on one particular edge case. From what I can tell, Valve gives a game the "Unsupported" rating if there's *any* kind of issue that isn't listed in their "Playable vs Verified" checklist. If there's a black texture where there isn't supposed to be, or some side functionality breaks, that's enough to get the "Unsupported" rating. Granted, their documentation should better explain that if that's their criteria, but either way, it is worth noting.
I think the issue of the fully "Playable" games being rated "Unsupported" is just caused by Proton getting updates, and the games not being re-reviewed. I know the documentation _says_ they'll be re-reviewed, but I can understand games slipping through. There are tons of games launching on Steam every day, so I can understand not every game will get the attention from Valve needed to be rated correctly. IIRC, there _is_ a way for developers / publishers to request their game be re-rated, but that also requires the developers / publishers to pay attention to it, and even then, I think the game needs to hit certain sales / ratings metrics before that option becomes available so Valve doesn't get spammed. Games being stuck with old ratings is just going to be a fact with this kind of system (even with ProtonDB to an extent), and there's not *much* that can be done to improve it. I think you proposed some good ideas for metrics Valve can use to prioritize what games need re-ratings, but it will never be a full fix, and it's important to understand that.
Lastly, there's one thing that Valve's rating indicates that ProtonDB's rating can't tell me without delving into the individual reviews: "Will the game *just work* with the default setup?" ProtonDB aggregates reviews on various devices (with different graphics cards) using various revisions of Proton (eg. Proton GE), and combines *all* of them into a single "Platinum / Bold / Silver / Bronze / Borked" rating. With Valve's rating, I know it's based exclusively on how it works on the Steam Deck's hardware using Valve's official Proton. Knowing whether I can get a game working correctly by eg. installing a different version of Proton is useful, which is why I will still use ProtonDB, but I also think Valve's rating serves a purpose that ProtonDB's overall rating does not convey very well.
PSA: late '90s 2D RTS games (Starcraft, C&C, AoE, Emperor: Battle for Dune) are *really fun* on the Steam Deck. You can either download the community layout, bind your own hotkeys to the Deck's billion buttons or just play in "point and click" mode. C&C/RA and SC are also free, and it's super trivial to bypass the EA and Blizzard launchers just by pointing the path directly to the game EXEs.
Oooh, Ys Origins. I played through it flawlessly on Ubuntu about a year or two ago. Awesome game. :)
And yes, I can recommend the entire series, although Origins, Memories of Celceta and Lacrimosa of Dana hold the top spots. Monstrum Nox is awesome too, Nordics will be interesting.
I love Ys, or as I like to call it "PvE pinball" xD
@@LordHonkInc I don't think I've ever not enjoyed playing an Ys game. (or trails for that matter)
Origins is my favorite!
Trails in the sky trilogy was awesome I think and Ys looks like another superb creation by Nihon Falcom.
It's worth noting that protonDB ratings can sometimes be wildly inaccurate or out of date
Spelunky 2 for instance is (or was for ages) marked as silver, but it runs flawlessly with zero tweaking, which is stated as such in the user comments in that very same page.
It feels like the community is aware these games work well, yet the badge which is the thing you actually see most is inaccurate
5:12 Do you have a list of the games you're showing on screen here? Some of these, espically the last one, look really up my alley!
ProtonDB is a great place to check to see if your game is playable on Linux. Sonic Adventure DX says it was unsupported on Steam Deck officially, while ProtonDB gave it a playable ranking.
I knew this was in response to the tweet from Freya, and Im very happy to see you talk about it.
Before I make a steam purchase I always check ProtonDB and only sometimes really notice the steam deck verified mark. (even for natively "supported" games, since those Linux ports can sometimes be crap too)
It would probably be a good idea to show the last time it was tested officially; and the average number of Deck players monthly or something like that, and not just the standard label.
And probably also would good to have something like a combination of manual voting and number of launch attempts and/or hours played by all players combined, used as one of the factors to sort which games should be re-tested.
i completely disagree.
as an consumer, i rather not purchase an game, because it was marked as unsupported despite the fact it was supported, than purchase something then end up not being able to played because it was miss labeled as supported.
the company will lost an sale? though luck, its much better to do what is better for consumers than for companies, not to mention that people would complain with the company who made the game, with valve, ask for refund of the deck (if they purchased it specifically to play that game), refund the game, give a lot of headeach.
Not to mention, an game being miss labeled as unsuported dont mean the player will not purchase it to play elsewere, so its not really an sale that got lost.
as for valve making it an colaborative effort with proton... No.
that will just introduce the mistakes of protonDB on steam itself.
many people test the game for a few minutes, never bother to finish it and mark as playable, then someone play a bit more the game crash and complain its not really playable, imagine that on the existing steam rating system...
we should expect an proper Q/A on the steam rating system, and the only way of doing that is if valve make it by thenselves.
We need 5 options:
Verified, Playable, Requires Tinker Steps, Underperforming and Unsupported.
Thats all.
Also, it should have a feature that users can essentiallly archive reviews that are no longer true due to an update. The bug does need to be known, and there needs to be some kind of evidence, but thats it. Or that a Bug is not Linux specific.
Funnily enough there appears to be a singular review of Dont Starve Together running on ChromeOS from 5 months ago - and thats about it?
ah no there are a few more like 2 on TF2.
It would probably be good to mention against which version of SteamOS/ Proton a game has been tested, with a bar on the top stating which versions you currently run, staying in view while you scroll through the game support list. It would also be great if more developers took Linux more seriously as a gaming platform and release true Linux versions that have a higher chance of being Steam Deck compatible.
That would be nice to indicate a regression
The funny thing is I actually generally find that the Windows versions run better through Proton than the Linux ports natively (this is especially true of Unity games).
even the old unity doom was also "unsupported" yet worked flawlessly on deck and met all the criteria for verified :')
I've been thinking about this for a few days now and … there kinda needs to be a fourth category. They have verified, playable, and unsupported. Okay, but there's a difference between it doesn't work right and nobody's tested it. And it would be really good if protondb ratings were included as well. It also wouldn't take very long for protondb ratings to include questions like whether or not it is fully controllable with a controller or has very small fonts … that sort of thing. Then all you have to do is default to showing protondb ratings for people who have actually used it on the steamdeck.
Basically more info is good, provided we know it comes from other users. That won't fix things that are weirdly verified when maybe playable would be a better description, but … more info is a good start.
"Known broken" needs to be a separate category.
Happy to see that mousepad made it to the upside down plane. Mine is coming in a week or so
Since ya pointed out HoloCure...
I believe it deserves a Playable badge: it doesn't do On-Screen Keyboard pop-up as the game asks you to put your profile name (requiring a manual shortcut key to pop it up, otherwise: you can't bypass it completely.) and it only shows Keyboard/Mouse prompts beyond Remapping...even tho...
*HoloCure has Controller Support* .
It should be:
Unplayable
Unoptimized
Playable
Optimized
Valve should've set as "Verified" only games that had native Linux ports, or at the very least created an extra ranking called "Optimized" that was Verified but with a native (and decent) Linux executable *and* gave it a lower dev tax as long as it was kept that way. I'm so fucking tired of everyone using Proton as a crutch when it was never meant to be
10:44 probably valve already do that...
but it take a lot of time to test 20.000 games, hell, valve have 100.000+ games on steam, the ammount of games grow faster than they can test it, imagine test it twice (one on windows other on linux to see if there is any difference), and then an new proton version is relase and they have to test it again to see if the existing bugs got squashed...
Nothing wrong with an unsupported catagory for things they didn't verify yet, but the meaning of it should be: "we did not test this, so we just don't know if it works and how well it works"
Things which clearly don't work should be in their own group: "incompatible"
ProtonDB is king.
Recent Steamdeck: European Truck Simulator 2, Guild Wars 2, Hades 2.
Ys Origin was my favorite by far.
On Steam Deck, there is a mod to add ProtonDB badges to the library page. I wish it could be also added to steam desktop as well, since it would be faster to preview the state as well as go to the game's page on ProtonDB if that badge was also a hyperlink to it.
The big issue I have with the "Steam Deck Verification" is that it has different priorities than a more general "Linux Proton Verification." Primarily the necessity of text size and controller requirements.
As an aside, I remember when Steam first officially brought itself to Linux and had all of the modern (at the time) Valve games, along with a few games from other developers to make *Native Linux Versions.* One of these was Killing Floor 1, there were some graphical bugs (invisible enemies being clearly visible) but perfectly playable. Jump to the modern day and, I can't change the resolution of the game, at all, and it even bugs out my dual monitor setup. I don't know how a game that was a Day-One Linux supported game, but now, with incredible compatibility tools, this has fallen to the wayside. And because it "has an official Linux version, i can't seem to force the Windows version to install so i can use Proton.
Steam deck and proton is amazing. I didn't had some much fun with a piece of electric equipment since HTC/Google G1. Recently I've been trying Black and White and The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection from EA store. The sims 2 works better than under windows, but EA App is a pain in the butt. Black and White works as well with just no CD patch. Proton has amazing game compatibility.
I love playing Hades on steam deck.
I just finished the epilogue (on God Mode, lol). What an amazingly fun game (that I am absolutely horrible at).
I always consult protondb. Usually I play monster hunter world or rise on my deck, and some other random games as well.
Valve should just ditch the official curation and make it a crowdsourced feature similar to the Tag system.
You can report a compatibility rating _IF IT'S "VERIFIED",_ if it's marked as "playable" or "unsupported", best you can do is read their motivation for that score (which, for "unsupported", is "valve is working on getting this game to work well").
I think both the "Verified" and "Unsupported" are categories that should be very well maintained. When a buyer reads "Verified", they're expecting a near perfect experience with the game, even if low graphics or 30fps. It doesn't feel good for buyers when a game like God of War, a game with a memory leak that causes the game to crash every 20 minutes, is marked as Verified. It certainly sucks for the developers who have their game working near flawlessly and have it marked as unsupported, who's gonna buy that? Not me.
ProtonDB is definitely the way to go. I wonder if there's a decky plugin to put a ProtonDB badge on the game store page. That would be massive.
It's so funny when the game is marked unsupported on steam but the protondb badge has it as Gold, but then the comments on protondb have like a long list of issues or steps needed to make it work.
Or the current game I'm playing is "unknown" on steam and "Platinum" on protondb
If I see “verified” with a green check I would expect the developer / publisher had made sure it worked properly as intended, and “playable” to mean controls and graphics etc works but maybe not performing 100% or controls have been pre-customized to work but not officially, at least when it comes to playing on game consoles.
Oftentimes I find obscure games don't have a rating despite working completely fine.
You’re missing something. Unsupported should mean unsupported by the dev. If a game dev doesn’t want their game supported on steam deck because they don’t want to provide support to steam deck users. Regardless of if the game works or not. I can kinda understand that. If I make a game and I don’t want to support the steam deck, valve has no rights to tell people it is supported on steam deck. Unfortunately a lot of publishers don’t care about the steam deck and also want the verified badge taken down then that’s their right. There are other things than working and how well that go into valve being able to put that badge on their game.
Tbh, I also find myself mostly checking protondb for deck compatibility as I used to before getting steam deck. And mostly because of their comment sections where can be described those little tweaks which makes game runs better (or at least just runs).
Oh and last game I played on deck is Dwarf Fortress. Actually works pretty good, but my right thumb began to hurt and I switched to laptop)
Wasn't even aware of Steams compatibility rating system. Use proton db all the time though, great resource.
I'm convinced Microsoft is paying some of these companies not to check Linux support to keep windows on top
“DONT TRUST THEM”
a option for devs to add playable tag to their games, valve can then just test it and maybe mark it officially to verified or playable (with some sort of check from valve).
Hold on, I absolutely care about Ys Origin being supported. I love the game!
Same I finished 1 of the story paths even! ! Started a 2nd run on a higher difficult with a friend too, and have played and beaten a few other Ys games
I have yet to play Ys but I loved Trails in the sky trilogy. Nihon Falcom is the really good stuff.
TheExileFox The Trails games are wild, you get really attached to the characters and story! I'm basically caught up aside from finishing Daybreak, it's definitely a journey
If a game is played a lot on Steam Deck and is marked as Unsupported, then the system should change that automatically to Playable. Or show how many Steam Deck players have played the game that matches player time on Windows or something like that. They could determine these things algorithmically.
4:30 Actually, DOOM ran perfectly fine on the Steam Deck despite the rating before the update to DOOM + DOOM 2. For some reason, DOOM 2 was rated but not DOOM. I'm not sure why they didn't rate DOOM when they obviously went ahead and rared DOOM 2
Doom + Doom II is now verified as you predicted.
IMO, some of the bigger problems come with "Verified" games with anti-cheat. Apex Legends has borked their anti-cheat a couple times and gotten people on Linux banned. Supposedly some accounts were reinstated, but some weren't. Another example is Battlefield, some people in the subreddit bought the game since it was Verified. Now, Battlefield is rolling out their own anti-cheat that won't be Linux compatible.
Valve will come out with a badge system called "Community Verified".
I think Valve needs to come up with a way to only allow steam deck users to only see games that work on the steam deck.
I don’t like that fact that I can see the games that don’t work on the steam it gets my hopes up for no reason.
I see it and get excited just to click on it and find out it don’t work.
As always filling in the gaps for the consumer and letting them know upstream what we need. 👍
My experience: I in some cases had more issues with playable games (shadow of the TR), than unsupported games (Batman Arkham Origins works flawlessly).
So to be is it case by case basis.
I also think that verified games with optimized settings should not hide the settings menu from user (which can be brought back with command line params SteamDeck=0 %command%).
Some games need a new rating to take them out of the unsupported category: Forbidden
I don't think unsupported is a bad name for the category because for a mass appeal device like SteamDeck I think erring on the side of caution is the better choice, but I definitely agree there should be a hard "Incompatible" category for games that just plain cannot be made to work.
I do use the Steam Compatibility markings on my PC to see if it works, but other than that I really prefer ProtonDB's way of doing things.
I don't actually look at this stuff unless the game is having issues the majority of the time I just run the game and it works. It does help that I find most versions of anti-cheat to be overstepping the line into spyware anyway so that crap was never going on my computer anyway.
I have played games that are marked by Valve as unsupported, but I could not play some games that are marked by Valve as verified.
Played a lot of "This Means Warp" on my steamdeck, playable official rating, but funnily I actually find the controls a little easier to use on the deck, compared to keyboard and mouse xD
Honestly I just ignore it, I even use a decky plugin into remove the badges. You just have to know what to expect with the deck performance-wise.
But damn do I miss playing certain games they don't even compatible due to anti cheat. Hopefully one day Valve can work something out, specifically the call of duty series.
I honestly don't even want crap anticheat to run on linux tbh, I wish companies would just cut that crap out and do server side AC properly.
I got several games in my library that are marked unsupported, but actually work.
Usually proton updated and suddenly everything works, but they were not relabeled.
And then there's games like USC: Counterforce which doesn't even launch. Intermittent problem, as I've had it launch in the past, on previous installs.
I don’t have a huge issue with unsupported. Keep in mind Valve is targeting the Windows audience with this. Windows users do not like unnecessary tinkering. They expect the default vanilla experience to just work with no modifications. Your call for “unsupported” to be changed comes from a very Linux user point of view.
I’d argue that unsupported is the best possible term. For one thing it ensures windows users who expect not to need to tinker with anything won’t have a bad time with Linux and abandon it. On the flip side it also encourages devs to remove those barriers to being able to play their game and overall improves the quality of the library for everyone.
Linux users are still free to tinker, but hopefully in the next 10-20 years we won’t need to just to play a game.
The Window’s Stockholm Syndrome is having to put up with whatever annoying privacy invading stuff Microsoft pushes through. The Linux Stockholm Syndrome is having to tinker to get basic things working. We’re used to it so we don’t even think about it. But not everyone lives this way.
By the way I’m down for a worse rating than unsupported.
Bungie laid off 220 employees.
Bungie also locking themselves out of a multimillion person market. Co-inky-dink!?
Stardew Valley, BeamNG Drive, some PS1 emu, Abiotic Factor, WereCleaner, No Man's Sky, and I even just downloaded the first two Borderlands to play some time in the near future.
It's quite literally my main gaming machine now, everything above but the Borderlands I haven't played on it yet gets above 30fps at minimum with very few or no hiccups. Probably the worst one was Abiotic Factor, I did a full playthrough pre-Crush Depth and it had some areas that would dip to the low twenties late game, but those areas have had optimization overhauls for Crush Depth, so it should be better now, if not 30fps or higher locked.
Also have to mention that a good chunk of those titles are not verified, and a couple were considered unknown or unplayable when I started playing them only to be upgraded to playable more recently. It's not a perfect system but it does make a good guesstimation for how a game might run before you try it yourself.
Automod detected BeamNG as a link and wiped my comment, I used a spelace instead of a period on it so maybe it'll fly now 🙃 Sucks that you have to go that far to keep scam and phish bots out.
I wish Valve would show the date or last update of rating too.
going to go on a limb and say devs not supporting Linux is a simple lack of confidence. Starting with Linux and porting after is way easier than the other way around, and usually more secure because of relying on open source instead of proprietary garbage.
valve could just check if a game runs on a deck for a relatively long time to add the tag playable?
tbh my process is the same as it's always been with PC: buy the game, install it and try it, check the wiki if I have any issues and see if they're resolvable (in this case ProtonDB) and if I can't get it to work, refund it. The only game I've had to refund so far was the Devil May Cry trilogy because the cutscenes used an unsupported codec and I couldn't watch them. I ended up just buying them on Switch instead because they're ancient. DMC4 and 5 ran fantastically on Linux.
Also I'm gaming on a Linux desktop so I really really really don't care about things like "text is small" or "launcher needs a mouse" or even "the Steam Deck's hardware is too weaksauce to handle this". These do not impact my playability in the slightest, but obv a game just flat out not launching on Linux would.
It would be cool if there was a seperate "community rating"
It's easy to say "just look at ProtonDB instead", but I can't filter my library by ProtonDB status when I'm viewing it on my deck. Ever single game lookup is a multistep process that basically requires a PC (or at least phone) and is just cumbersome. And no, I'm not setting my steam library to "public"
I Personally haven't had any games misclassified, but I do agree that some sort of feedback or report system is simply required. Maybe just have an option for the "report" button allow feedback of this type? But that's currently intended for games violating rules of some sort, so also doesn't quite fit. Or just add a button next to the rating, letting people provide feedback there..
Proton DB needs support for non-Steam games.
so kay yu (the main dev of holocure and holo x break) recently tweeted about this topic here is what he said
(quote tweeting 4:16)
"
@FreyaHolmer Oh I have experience with this
For Steam Deck compatibility, games are reviewed and needs to pass a whole bunch of tests, some of which are completely arbitrary or stupidly specific for no reason, and if it fails those, it's "unsupported" even though it runs perfectly fine.
"
"
HoloCure is "unsupported" for Steam Deck, and the reason they gave was that the game's graphics settings aren't configurable enough.... that's it
It plays without any other issue.
So yeah, just wanted to say that that steam deck compatibility tag is usually pretty inaccurate
"
"
For Holo X Break on Steam Deck, we failed one of the tests for "the game sometimes shows mouse, keyboard, or non-steam-deck controller icons"
i'm like, bruh
"
(so for holocure, it has "unsupported" because of not having enough graphic config options)
The funny thing is they don't need to be configurable, the game rus flawlessly as is
I use Proton DB all the time, but, I've only ever run into one game that didn't work at all and it's broken on Windows too. I got a game for free with trading card sales and it was Magical Drop V. Devs abandoned it because they lost the license. Time to set sail.
I think a lot of issues could fixed by adding a "Untested" tag, and leaving the Unsupported tag intact.
Because devs don't make the anticheat work with Linux and Proton.
Edit : five seconds after when I paused he came to the same conclusion lol.
Great minds think alike, but fools seldom differ.
I use ProtonDB all of the time. All, but 3 games in my collection work. Those games are very old.
Curious about which games don't work. Maybe there's some ways to get them to work.
@@pcmark-nl All 3 games are abandoned. One of them even features a game stopping bug that the developers hasn't and won't fix.
I don't have a Deck but I check to see if it's verified or playble to see if it has full controller support ticked because there are many games that are listed as Steam Deck verified/playable with control criteria ticked but devs never listed the game as full or partial controller support.
They should probably also add the untested label.
If you have steam deck, try if the game runs, if not, you can always sideload W10 on sd card and run these games there. They are rare anyways.
0:50 Maybe Microsoft is paying those developers in a monopolistic way to not enable Proton support? That needs to be investigated.
Nah, Microsoft games support steam deck
Both Halo MCC and Infinite works flawlessly with Proton (MCC had some issues and took 343 a year to fix, but they did fix it).
Halo is the one big franchise Microsoft owns (since first release)
I just use the protondb mod on steamdeck
ProtonDB isnt a solution, it a way to push native Linux support. If more shows up about Linux is needed, more will try to make a native game.
Proton is so good that I just buy - either it already works now or would be fixed in the future.
And I can reboot to Windows if needed.
doom was running on a port to unity since like 2020 and ran fine on linux, it hasn't run in dosbox since before then