With a month and a half behind, a queue of pre-orders and orders still to be disposed of and a very positive general appreciation, Steam Deck has already received several updates, and Valve he was keen to illustrate all the improvements that his “PC from hand” received: let’s see them below.
Verified on the Deck: 2,000 titles in continuous growth: In just one month we have passed a huge milestone, with 2,000 games officially “Verified” or “Playable” on the Deck. It was exciting to see the huge selection of games played by the Community: new and old, big and small, of any genre. It seems players are having a lot of fun on the Deck. We will continue to peruse the Steam catalog and look forward to sharing our next milestone with you. We also listen carefully to customer feedback in this space, as we want to make sure the “Deck Verified” program is working. To this end, we have added a Feedback feature that allows customers to report whether or not they agree with the “Verified” rating of each stock.
Anti-cheat progress: One of our priorities is to support as many titles on Steam as possible, including titles that employ anti-cheat technology. Thanks to the collaboration between Proton developers, service providers and contributors, we have made significant progress in offering these games to the Steam Deck Community. The two main anti-cheat services, BattlEye and Easy Anti-Cheat, now have a streamlined process for developers who want to provide compatibility with Proton and Steam Deck. So far, Elden Ring and Apex Legends are two examples of games that are taking advantage of this work.
The Steam Store and Library: We’ve spent some time making the Steam Store more efficient and faster on the Deck. We also understand that navigating the Library can be tough if you have a lot of games, so we’ve made it easier for you to work with the introduction of fast scrolling. We have also added the ability to create dynamic collections within the Library, based on the tags and other features of the games.
… and we connect you to games outside of Steam: We have worked closely with Microsoft to offer Xbox Cloud Gaming games to Steam Deck users via the Microsoft Edge browser, and Community members have contributed to the Edge Flatpak utility, which makes it accessible on Steam Deck. To enable input for Edge (a Chromium-based browser), we worked with the Google Chrome team to add native support for Deck controls so they can be detected directly from websites.
Keyboard: Since launch we have also improved the virtual keyboard experience. Dual trackpad typing and game mode keyboard is now available in the Desktop version. We’ve also added several new keyboard themes so you can choose the one that best suits your mood at the moment.
Diet: Finding new ways to improve Steam Deck’s battery life is always one of our top priorities. We found that depending on what you’re doing you can expect 2 to 8 hours of gameplay, but if you want to further optimize battery life there are additional options. Last month we added the ability to reduce the frame rate down to 15fps (this setting works great for visual storytelling, puzzle games, and various simulation games). For those who like to tinker, we’ve also made available TDP (processor power), GPU clock control and FSR (screen scaling) settings to optimize power even more.
Windows: Although there is still work to be done on the drivers, it is now possible to install Windows 10 (and soon version 11). We are working with AMD and other partners and have made constant progress on Windows drivers. Support for fTPM is currently in beta and once released it will be possible to install Windows 11. The last part is about the Windows audio drivers and we hope to share some good news about it soon.
Source: Steam Community
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