FYI – The Steam Deck won’t be able to run your whole Steam library

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

It seems that a statement over Valve’s Steam Deck and its ability to play your whole Steam catalog has been misconstrued. While the hardware inside the Steam Deck is probably capable, the software that enables the Linux-based Steam Deck to play Steam games might not support every single game on Steam at launch.

The magic that lets the Linux-based Steam Deck run games written for Windows is called Proton. It came out in 2018, from a joint development between Valve, the maker of Steam, and a company called CodeWeavers. It’s essentially a compatibility layer, that translates the Windows code into something that the Linux operating system that runs on the Steam Deck can use.

Anyone who’s ever used a game emulator to play retro games knows that some games need additional tweaks to function normally when played in this manner. That’s also the case with Proton. While there is a growing number of Steam titles that work perfectly with the compatibility layer, any game that isn’t on that list could face glitches or straight-up not run.

READ MORE: Which games in your Steam library work on Steam Deck?

CodeWeavers’ president, James Ramey, spoke to the Boiling Point podcast recently to clear up the confusion, which seems to stem from a comment from Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais, who said: “We haven’t really found something we could throw at this device that it couldn’t handle yet.”

James thinks that comment was referencing the AMD hardware inside the Steam Deck, and not the Proton compatibility layer that enables the games to run. See, Proton supports 16,000 games or so, but that’s nowhere near the total of titles on Steam today.

James is also quick to point out that that it doesn’t mean that the entire library of Steam won’t be playable on the Steam Deck eventually. Proton is “a living, breathing project” and is continually being improved to support more games. Whatever the actual number of games supported at launch, we’re still excited for the Steam Deck and what it means for portable gaming.

edited to clarify that it was the Boiling Point podcast that James Ramey spoke to, not RPS as previously attributed

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Game Boy games may be coming to a Nintendo Switch near you
• It’s still going to suck trying to get an Xbox Series X or PS5 in 2022
• The best Xbox controllers
• Atari’s retro classic Centipede is getting a fresh coat of paint and couch co-op

Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.