Steam Deck is a portable gaming device from Valve. According to the expectations, it will be available for purchase at the end of this year. By having a Steam Deck, you will be able to carry your Steam library with you anywhere you go. This functionality was hinted at on the first announcement of this portable device. However, Codeweavers president James B. Ramey has asked users to evaluate their assumptions before purchasing.
Proton was co-developed by Codeweavers and Valve. It is the layer that allows SteamOS to operate windows – based games on Linux, and it comes pre-installed on the Steam Deck. While you may anticipate, certain titles would not run as indicated with SteamOS, despite the fact that Proton already supports roughly 16,000 Steam games. Although this is a big selection, it’s doesn’t include most of the titles available on Steam, which could clash with your few buys.
The misunderstanding about library-wide support obviously came out of an IGN conversation with Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais. Griffais stated that the Steam Deck would be strong enough to play almost all Steam games. Ramey perceives it as being more of hardware compatibility than just software. On the podcast of Boiling Steam, Ramey clearly mentioned that surely, there would be various games that Steam Deck will not handle or play on its release.
Here is what Ramey explained:
I don’t necessarily think he was referencing supporting that game in Proton–I think he was referencing that the device has the horsepower, the video graphics, the RAM, the hard drive space to support any game out there.
He believes, though, that the Steam Deck will encourage developers to make sure their games are fully compatible with Linux or play really well with Proton. Ramey thinks, owning a gadget such as the Steam Deck will raise costs for compatibility, causing Proton to develop even further than it ever was. However, you might completely avoid this problem by switching SteamOS with Windows, which Valve claims would be possible.
