Valve has recently announced the Steam Deck, a handheld PC that looks to compete with both portable systems on the handheld gaming market and PCs, and many have stated that it is likely to give the Switch OLED model a run for its money. The specs of the Steam Deck’s essential internals outclass the Switch’s with 12 more GBs of RAM and a solid state drive in the more expensive models, and the system will be running a more customizable Linux-based operating system. It has also been announced that in order to run games which don’t support Linux the Steam Deck will be running Valve’s in-house version of Wine, Proton.
Wine is an open-source program for Mac and Linux that makes Windows game compatible on different operating systems. The Steam Deck will be configured to run Valve’s Steam-integrated version of Wine to play Windows-only games. While it has been confirmed by Valve that users will be able to install Windows onto the console, Proton will be the way that most players experience the handheld if they do not want to make modifications themselves.
However, compatibility is still up in the air. There is a long list of games that work well on the service but aren’t supported natively by Proton, and on top of that there are many games that have trouble booting or running on the platform. Many of the games that are currently listed as “borked” on ProtonDB seem to have problems with anti-cheat software and while the developers are working hard to ensure compatibility for the Steam Deck’s release, there is a fairly large number of games that currently do not work – or at least require quite a bit of tweaking – with the service.
Proton Support For Anti-Cheat Will Affect Steam Deck Compatibility
A handful of the games listed as “borked” on ProtonDB includes:
- Destiny 2
- PUBG: Battlegrounds
- Rainbow Six Siege
- Gears 5
- Duke Nukem Forever
- Dead By Daylight
- Homefront
- For Honor
- Warhammer: Vermintide 2
- Darksiders
- PlanetSide 2
- Digimon Masters Online
- Galactic Civilizations I: Ultimate Edition
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is a popular game that does not yet work on the system, and the user reports on ProtonDB indicate that the reason is the use of Easy Anti-Cheat. This goes for a variety of other games, including Turtle Rock’s recent Back 4 Blood, which appears to run, but users experience disconnects after a minute or less of gameplay. EAC is a way for multiplayer games to protect their online experience, but it currently does not work with Proton as the service either fails to load or crashes games in progress before long. Valve seems to be working with partners, however, and EAC has made motions to suggest that by the time Steam Deck comes out, EAC will be compatible with Proton, so if owners want to use the Steam Deck for e-sports competitive mobile games like Apex Legends and Fall Guys they will most likely be able to on launch.
The other main anti-cheat software is BattlEye, which games like PUBG: Battlegrounds and Destiny 2 use much in the same way as EAC. When players boot up the games through Proton, an error message often displays stating that BattlEye is missing a driver. BattlEye has also made a statement stating that the service will be Proton-ready when the Steam Deck launches, and recently has confirmed that their current build works with it.
Many publishers add third-party anti-cheat and DRM software to games as anti-piracy measures or for more stable online experiences, and developers of that software now have to reconfigure their programs to work with the Steam Deck. Since Valve develops Proton with CodeWeavers, and it knows that handheld versions of online games are what sets the Steam Deck apart from the Nintendo Switch, it’s likely that the companies are working on ways to make Proton more friendly to those programs. There are a handful of other problems that can affect games attempting to run on Proton, and these seem to vary more widely from game to game, sometimes requiring individual workarounds. But as support continues to grow, hopefully there will be more positive boot-up reports coming in the lead up to the Steam Deck’s holiday release.
