Valve’s Steam Deck verification program has been a helpful, if somewhat flawed, method of determining if a game is a good fit for the company’s handheld PC. But while many games might be granted a “Verified” badge, there have been many cases where real-world performance doesn’t live up to the expectation of players. That’s why Valve has introduced a more nuanced way for you to determine if a game is a good fit for the Steam Deck.
Along with the Steam Deck verification status, games will now feature average frame-rate data on the store page once Valve has gathered enough data from players. This will give you an indication of real-world performance on the Steam Deck, collecting data from other players using the Steam Deck in their default states and averaging it across their total playtime.
“The current Steam Deck Verified compatibility rating is based on standardized test criteria, but it may not match every customer’s bar for acceptable gameplay,” the announcement post reads. “This is especially true around performance – a game with an Unsupported rating due to unstable performance may be considered playable by some customers, and a Verified game may not reach a framerate that some customers prefer to play at.”
Alongside the average, Valve is also adding a histogram that let’s you see numerous averages spread out over playtime. This can help you determine if a game has pockets of poor performance that might be dragging down the average, giving you even more information to help you determine if a purchase for Steam Deck play is worthwhile.
Valve relies on other players for this data. So while it says that thousands of games already have this featured on their store pages, there are still many more that require more playtime before they can be calculated and displayed. The data collection is opt-in, too, meaning only Steam users actively sharing their data through the Steam Beta Client will count towards these averages. Valve says it will be rolling out this program to the main Steam branch soon.
It also says that tools like this could come to other platforms in the future, but that it chose the Steam Deck first because of its standard hardware configuration. It’s easy to see this being extended to the Steam Machine for the same reasons, with Valve potentially waiting for more of them to be in the hands of players before being able to accurately average the data. It’s a useful metric that not only helps players make more informed buying decisions, but also potentially helps Valve determine what is, and isn’t a meaningful jump in performance as it evaluates a potential Steam Deck successor.
