Over 25,000 games are now Steam Deck certified by Valve | usagoldmines.com

The Steam Deck is a remarkable gadget for a lot of reasons, but Valve’s work on the handheld’s Linux-based SteamOS software (and its support of the same) is its real special ingredient. For example, the Steam Deck Verified system lets you know that a game will work on its somewhat pokey hardware, tested and checked by Valve itself. The system recently passed 25,000 confirmed titles.

That’s according to the third-party database SteamDB, which has cataloged 25,055 total games as either Verified (7,528 titles that are running with zero issues) or Playable (17,527 titles that are running with few issues). Meanwhile, GamingOnLinux says a little over 6,000 games have been designated as “Unsupported” by Valve. That could be for any number of reasons, but it generally means a lack of controller support, too-high technical requirements for the AMD Zen 2 architecture, or third-party software incompatible with SteamOS (e.g., kernel-level anti-cheat).

The Steam Deck Verified system is so successful that Microsoft has basically copied it. The Xbox Handheld Compatibility Program mirrors many of the same features, but for handhelds like the Asus ROG Xbox Ally, which runs Windows out of the box.

With over 30,000 tested titles, Valve is approximately one quarter of the way through Steam’s total catalog, now estimated at around 120,000 games. With 20,000 new games or more per year at this point, it might seem like an impossible task to get to everything. But presumably Valve prioritizes new releases and games with high player counts, so the vast majority of Steam Deck owners have an answer for whether a game they actually want to play will work with the system.

Next month will be four years since the Steam Deck’s initial release, and the impact it’s made on PC gaming is hard to overstate. It blew up the handheld PC gaming space almost singlehandedly, and competitors like the Asus ROG and Lenovo Legion series apparently haven’t been able to touch it. There’s no sign of a second-generation Steam Deck arriving anytime soon, but Valve is expanding its hardware offerings with a desktop/console hybrid Steam Machine and a new VR headset, the Steam Frame.