The Steam Deck might already be over four years old, but games continue to be added to the official ‘Steam Deck Verified’ list, including recently announced titles such as NBA 2K27. The handheld device has now hit a key milestone, with third-party database SteamDB now recording over 30,000 Steam games which are either ‘Steam Deck Verified’ or ‘Steam Deck Playable’. Of the 30,065 games currently on SteamDB’s list meeting either of these two categories (which you can view here), 8,970 are fully-verified, while the remaining 21,095 titles are marked as playable.
There are a number of requirements Steam games need to meet to be marked by Valve as either verified or playable on Steam Deck. With verified games, the experience needs to be perfect and exactly as you’d expect for a handheld device – such as menus that are navigable through the Steam Deck’s default controls, and acceptable performance levels in the game’s default graphical settings. Playable games will still often run great when it comes to gameplay, but menus may be more finicky, and you might run into issues with games requiring use of the on-screen keyboard. Even so, the total number of acceptably playable titles is likely to exceed the 21,095 officially touted as ‘playable’ by Valve.
Despite its Linux origins, it can play lots of Windows-only titles through Valve’s in-house Proton compatibility layer. However, there are still some titles that remain unplayable on the Steam Deck, such as games with strict kernel-level anti-cheat software like Black Ops 7 and Valorant, as is the case for other Linux gaming devices. For games like these, there are unofficial workarounds to run Windows 11 on a Steam Deck, or alternatively, there are plenty of Windows-based handheld gaming PCs now also on the market.
