Steam has delivered a refresh of its store page for Steam Deck owners, allowing people to see the average framerate a game will run at on the handheld device based on the performance data of other players.
While games often arrive as verified to work on Steam Deck, this doesn’t always translate to working well. To let players know just how well a game will perform on Valve’s portable PC, others who have opted in to share their data will contribute to a consensus on possible framerates.
Under the additional info for Steam Deck compatibility on the game page, a new note will display the average framerate. It will also be possible to expand this data further by looking at the histogram, which will qualify the average into a graph that not only displays how common it is for a game to run at that framerate, but also how often the game hitches or stutters for players.
According to Valve, although the current information relies on standardized test criteria, the denominations “may not match every customer’s bar for acceptable gameplay.” The company is also planning to expand this feature beyond Steam Deck in order to provide framerate information for more devices. The feature is already live for games with enough data points to provide an average. For example, right now Final Fantasy VII Rebirth shows that Steam Deck OLED players run the game at an average of 37 frames per second, while those playing Hades II are seeing 88 FPS on the same hardware.
With portable PC devices like Steam Deck, ROG Ally and even the Ayn Thor becoming more standard for players who don’t need the most expensive hardware, seeing how a game will perform with more specificity is only a good thing. It doesn’t hurt that Steam are planning to expand the Steam Deck lineup in future, and having such features available only makes the hardware more accessible for those less accustomed to PC gaming.