Valve's Steam Machine Verification Ignores Deck-Incompatible Games

Valve launched its Steam Machine verification program approximately one month after its initial announcement, with compatibility ratings beginning to appear on Steam store pages last night. This new system aims to assess game compatibility and playability specifically for Valve's living room-focused hardware. However, the program is reportedly "still learning about" Steam Machine compatibility for numerous games that the Steam Deck, Valve's portable device, is too underpowered to run effectively.

For games already verified on the Steam Deck, compatibility with the Steam Machine appears to be a straightforward extension, as these titles are expected to perform well. Similarly, games confirmed to not function with SteamOS will naturally not work on the SteamOS-powered Steam Machine. The primary area of concern lies with games that load on SteamOS but fail to meet the Steam Deck's performance benchmarks. These titles are marked as "Unsupported" on the Steam Deck because their graphics settings cannot be adequately configured to run at the required 1200x800 resolution and 30 frames per second.

The Steam Machine, by contrast, requires games to perform at 1080p and 30 fps. The "Unsupported" designation for these games on the Steam Deck indicates that they either "cannot be configured to run well on Steam Deck" or "require manual configuration of graphics settings to perform well on Steam Deck." The absence of specific Steam Machine verification for these particular titles leaves a notable gap in the program's utility, as it fails to provide clear guidance for users on how these games will perform on the new hardware.