Future of Steam Deck’s Game Compatibility Unknown
A major concern of many is the Steam Deck’s compatibility with Windows games, which depends on the compatibility layer of Proton. With many popular games, such as those which use Easy Anti-Cheat, currently incompatible with SteamOS through Proton, Valve’s bold announcement that the Steam Deck could run your entire library seemed to hint at a major update to Proton.
When the Steam Deck was first announced, Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais announced “All the games we wanted to be playable is, really, the entire Steam library. We haven’t really found something we could throw at this device that it couldn’t handle.” Valve also announced that they would fix compatibility issues with Easy Anti-Cheat, which is in games such as Rainbow Six Seige and Dayz. These statements, when taken literally, seem to indicate that Proton will be given a major update and will soon be able to run every single game available in the Steam Store.
However, recently, James Ramey, president of Proton developer Codeweavers, cast doubts on Valve’s confident Steam Deck announcements. In an interview, James stated that he believes that Pierre-Loup was referring to the Steam Deck’s hardware capacity to run any game, rather than Proton supporting all games. James further expounded on his statement: “People have kind of taken that and they have said, “well, that means it can support the entire Steam library.” Well, I don’t necessarily think that is true because not every game runs in Proton as of today.”
He did give some words of hope for the future of game compatibility on the Steam Deck, saying that Proton is “a living, breathing project” and will support more games in the future of the Steam Deck’s lifespan. This could be the case especially if the Steam Deck sells successfully, and game developers work with Valve or Codeweavers to ensure compatibility with their games.
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