Valve has just confirmed that the Steam Deck PC handheld will officially launch on February 25th. Let us clarify right away that this isn’t the date you can expect to get your device, though.

Rather, on February 25th the embargo for press reviews and impressions will lift. Additionally, Valve will send the first batch of order emails to reservation holders, allowing those users to finalize their purchase within the next three days. After that time, if no purchase has been made, the reservation will skip to the next person in the queue.

Valve expects to actually ship the first units starting on February 28th. It also aims to release new batches of order emails on a weekly basis. Of course, if you haven’t even reserved a Steam Deck unit yet, your wait will be much longer.

A few days ago, we learned that some of the Steam Deck Verified games can already be seen through SteamDB. Take a look at the list below, including some titles that run with several issues and a handful that currently do not run at all.

Steam Deck Verified:

  • Aliens: Fireteam Elite
  • Ape Out
  • Castle Crashers
  • Celeste
  • Circuit Superstars
  • Cuphead
  • Dark Souls 2
  • Dark Souls 3
  • Death Stranding
  • Death’s Door
  • Dishonored
  • Final Fantasy 1 Pixel Remaster
  • Guacamelee! 2
  • Gunfire Reborn
  • Hollow Knight
  • Hot Wheels Unleashed
  • Into the Breach
  • Mad Max
  • Manifold Garden
  • Mark of the Ninja Remastered
  • Noita
  • Portal 2
  • Psychonauts 2
  • RAD
  • Record of Lodoss War -Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth-
  • Remnant: From the Ashes
  • Risk of Rain 2
  • Rogue Legacy 2
  • Sable
  • Scarlet Nexus
  • Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
  • Super Mega Baseball 3
  • Tetris Effect Connected
  • The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Repentance expansion is NOT Linux native, however)
  • The Messenger
  • Total War: Warhammer 2
  • Tunche
  • Webbed

Have issues but run on the Steam Deck:

Aliens: Fireteam Elite

Ape Out

Castle Crashers

Celeste

Circuit Superstars

Cuphead

Dark Souls 2

Dark Souls 3

Death Stranding

Death’s Door

Dishonored

Final Fantasy 1 Pixel Remaster

Guacamelee! 2

Gunfire Reborn

Hollow Knight

Hot Wheels Unleashed

Into the Breach

Mad Max

Manifold Garden

Mark of the Ninja Remastered

Noita

Portal 2

Psychonauts 2

RAD

Record of Lodoss War -Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth-

Remnant: From the Ashes

Risk of Rain 2

Rogue Legacy 2

Sable

Scarlet Nexus

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Super Mega Baseball 3

Tetris Effect Connected

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Repentance expansion is NOT Linux native, however)

The Messenger

Total War: Warhammer 2

Tunche

Webbed

  • Among Trees
  • Black Skylands
  • Bravely Default 2
  • Cats in Time
  • Cookie Clicker
  • Crypt of the Necrodancer (default controller config doesn’t work, controller glyphs don’t match)
  • Dyson Sphere Program
  • Factorio
  • Farming Simulator 19
  • Inscryption
  • NieR:Automata
  • Plants vs. Zombies GOTY
  • RimWorld
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider
  • Season of Mystery: The Cherry Blossom Murders
  • Slay the Spire
  • Stormworks: Build and Rescue
  • Subnautica
  • Swords of Legends Online
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
  • Tomb Raider 2013
  • Tribes of Midgard
  • Valheim
  • War Thunder

Does not run:

Among Trees

Black Skylands

Bravely Default 2

Cats in Time

Cookie Clicker

Crypt of the Necrodancer (default controller config doesn’t work, controller glyphs don’t match)

Dyson Sphere Program

Factorio

Farming Simulator 19

Inscryption

NieR:Automata

Plants vs. Zombies GOTY

RimWorld

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Season of Mystery: The Cherry Blossom Murders

Slay the Spire

Stormworks: Build and Rescue

Subnautica

Swords of Legends Online

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Tomb Raider 2013

Tribes of Midgard

Valheim

War Thunder

  • Arizona Sunshine (VR title)
  • Budget Cuts (VR title)
  • Job Simulator (VR title)
  • Persona 4 Golden
  • theBlu (VR title)

In other Steam Deck news, Phoronix reports that Valve engineer Samuel Pitoiset has been working to make some changes to the open-source Radeon Vulkan ‘RADV’ driver with the goal to improve power savings when using Variable Rate Shading. Pitoiset explained this will be enabled by default on Van Gogh (the AMD APU the Steam Deck is based upon, with some customizations).

Arizona Sunshine (VR title)

Budget Cuts (VR title)

Job Simulator (VR title)

Persona 4 Golden

theBlu (VR title)

Are you excited about the upcoming release of the Steam Deck? Let us know below.

For power saving.

This MR is composed by roughly 3 parts:

  • lower RADV_FORCE_VRS in NIR to avoid duplicating code in both compiler backends
  • rework it by add a new intrinsic to load the VRS rates dynamically
  • add RADV_FORCE_VRS_CONFIG_FILE and monitor it using inotify

It’s now possible to force per-vertex VRS dynamically by writing eg. 2x2 via RADV_FORCE_VRS_CONFIG_FILE (previously the VRS rates were hardcoded in the vertex shaders). This is enabled by default on VanGogh and the default rate is 1x1 if nothing else is set.