What games can the Steam Deck not play?

Valve’s Steam Deck is billed as a handheld gaming machine that can play many of your PC games in the palms of your hands. But considering its size, some games don’t work on Steam Deck.

First, it’s important to note that Valve designed the Steam Deck playing games from the Steam library. It comes with a Linux-based operating system specifically built for the Steam Deck.

But the device is technically a full-blow computer in your hands, and you can download Windows, unlocking tons of games you can play outside the Steam library.

With Windows as your operating system, Steam Deck‘s hardware is the only thing stopping you from playing any PC game.

So, what games don’t work on Steam Deck?

Short answer: There are hundreds of games that won’t work on the Steam Deck.

Unfortunately, there are hundreds of games that aren’t going to work on the Steam Deck. It would be almost impossible to find and list them all in one place.

READ MORE: Is it safe to play the Steam Deck in hot weather?

First, the Steam Deck‘s hardware will limit it to some degree. At best, it aligns with today’s lower-end gaming laptops in terms of performance. And that’s likely being generous.

So, some of today’s most graphically demanding titles may struggle to run effectively on the Steam Deck.

However, if you download Windows on the Steam Deck, you can try any game available on Windows devices.

On the other hand, the Linux operating system limited the Steam Deck out of the box. Valve built the OS specifically with the Steam library in mind.

But there are tons of games on Steam that don’t cooperate well with Linux.

Valve provides a tool to help identify games that work

To help identify which Steam games work with the original Steam Deck operating system, Valve developed a tool to identify which games are available.

Check out that link if you have questions about a Steam game on Steam Deck.

So to answer the question, there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of games that don’t work and likely won’t ever work on the Steam Deck.

But there are still thousands more that you can play from a handheld device for the first time, thanks to Valve’s latest creation.

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