Despite its age, Valve’s Steam Deck is still one of the best ways to play PC games away from your desk, with developers continuing to tweak their games specifically for the portable device. That involves some clever optimization, from launch and through post-release support, with Valve introducing new tools to ensure Verified games specifically retain this certification.
Detailed in a blog post, Valve has launched two new tools that developers can leverage to better gauge the current performance of a game on Steam Deck. The first collects frame rate data from all players that opted to allow data collection, showing a rolling 30-day average that can help identify if a recent patch or Proton update has negatively affected performance. This tool is only available to games that are already certified as Verified, but will open soon to those with the lower “Playable” certification, where is likely to be more useful to help clean up overall performance.
The second will give users who play more than 10 minutes of a game during a single session the ability to send feedback to a developer and Valve directly regarding a game’s Verified certification. Users can dispute whether a game should be listed under that category, and leave critical feedback regarding issues that should necessitate a re-evaluation. This includes various factors, such as in-game text legibility, performance, stability, and more.
Valve seems to be introducing this to help developers further address issues introduced by patches, but it could go a long way to help correct the many issues with the Steam Deck Verified program entirely. There are numerous examples of games with Verified status that don’t run well on the Steam Deck at all, requiring massive compromises in visual fidelity or overall performance that make the badge of approval less reliable. Valve says that over 95% of Steam users agree with Verified ratings, but the existence of websites lime ProtonDB, which allow users to help others fine-tune Steam Deck performance for many Verified games, suggests otherwise.
These tools will likely also help prepare developers for the launch of Valve’s Steam Machine sometime in 2026, with an entirely different verification process being proposed by Valve to similarly help evaluate performance for its living-room PC.
