Steam Deck’s official rating system shows which games will be compatible with the new console

Valve’s Steam Deck will offer a system of compatibility ratings for PC games, so you will know if the portable console can support them or not.

If you’ve got an aging desktop rig, it can sometimes be a bit touch-and-go as to whether new PC games will run smoothly (or at all), or if you’ll have to invest in any new components. Fortunately the Steam Deck, the new portable gaming PC from Valve, will bypass this concern with a handy and easy-to-understand rating system that informs customers exactly how well games will function on the platform. Just take a look at the video below to see how it all works:

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As you can see, there will be four compatibility categories according to this new rating system.

Top of the pile is a green tick meaning Verified, which means that the game in question will work just fine straight out of the box. This is the gold standard which means that you shouldn’t have any 

After that comes Playable. For games in this category, which are signalled by a yellow “i”, you may have to make some adjustments to the settings to ensure an optimum experience when you play.

Unsupported is the dreaded label that means the game will not work on the Steam Deck, so you’ll have to only play it on a full-fledged desktop with adequate specifications, or else choose a different game if you see that dark grey prohibition sign.

The final grouping is “Unknown“, meaning that the game hasn’t yet been tested and so there’s no way to be sure whether it will work or not on the Stream Deck.

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The Steam Deck offers considerably powerful hardware, so hopefully relatively few games will be in the ‘Unsupported’ category; in detail, it has a 4-core AMD Zen 2 CPU with 2.4-3.5GHz, twinned with an AMD RDNA 2 GPU 8 CUs at 1.0-1.6GHz that packs 1.8 Teraflops of power. The device is currently available for pre-order, priced at $399 (£349), and units will begin shipping in January 2022.