Valve’s Steam Deck released to much success back in 2022 and has grown ever since. The library of games officially supported on Steam Deck is gigantic these days and the popularity of handheld gaming has brought in many copycats and competitors – pretty much all of which Valve has fended off. Holding similar status to the Nintendo Switch, but with more games to play with.
The fact that there are many more games outside of the ‘Verified’ and ‘Playable’ labels makes this growing number uncertain as well. Some games go under the radar despite running well, while others that feature the label may not run as well as you’d expect.
Steam Deck games library is now well over 14,000
The number of games that are officially supported on the Steam Deck is always rising, which is hardly a surprise with new releases on the platform every day. Plus, sometimes it even takes a while for them to be officially recognized on the list of verified games despite running perfectly well at launch. On top of that, we have the ‘Playable’ rating, which tells us that a game is functional on the Deck, but it could require some tinkering with.
As PCGamesN recently reported, adding all of these together makes for over 14,200 titles (14,218 to be exact) – 4,719 verified and 9,499 playable, not that this figure will remain the same for long.
As a handheld device, it is somewhat limited in what it can and can’t support – at least compared to your average gaming PC. Even still, this massive amount of games makes it a versatile choice compared to the likes of the Nintendo Switch, which at the time of writing supports 11,009 titles according to Moby Games.
There’s more than just Steam to think about
It’s worth noting that you can get even more out of your Steam Deck if you want to push it beyond its ‘stock’ library. What we mean by this is experimenting with other game launchers to unlock access to further titles which aren’t available on Steam, though you’ll get mixed results in terms of compatibility.
Perhaps it’s better to think about the possibility of emulation on the Steam Deck to play console classics not available on PC – that opens up a whole new catalog outside of Steam’s realm. To aid portability, Valve’s Steam Deck is also great for game streaming via GeForce Now, which was made easier than ever recently. All this really makes it more versatile than the Switch.
Should you always trust it?
The verified or playable labels are a good way of gauging what games will work well on your Steam Deck, but this doesn’t always guarantee the same kind of performance across the board. Different games have different system requirements, and the Steam Deck may still gain verified or playable status despite choppy performance.
In this Reddit thread from back when we saw it hit the 12,000 mark, you’ll find many people noting that the verification system does have a few problems, pointing out poor performance on several games despite them being verified. On the flipside though, there are many games which are yet to get the coveted verified checkmark while running smoothly.
All in all, the ‘true’ number of games which work well with the Steam Deck is hard to judge when we take into account every variable, but it’s likely well above that of the Switch.
