GeForce Now could save The Dark Ages from impending Doom on the Steam Deck
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Doom: The Dark Ages feels like it’s going to be one of the biggest games of the year once it arrives on May 15th. The last time we got a mainline Doom title was in 2020 with Doom Eternal, a game we often like to use for benchmarks in our GPU testing lab. Eternal is an incredibly optimized game – you can run it on a wide range of hardware and it’s even got the Steam Deck Verified badge of honor.
However, it’s evident The Dark Ages isn’t going to be too easy to run on the popular Valve handheld as the system requirements reveal that a raytracing-capable GPU is required. This is something we first ran into with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, another game that runs on the latest id Tech engine, id Tech 7.
Doom: The Dark Ages on the Steam Deck is a GeForce Now job
So, like Indy, which we already know runs terribly on the Steam Deck, we think the only answer is cloud gaming. Nvidia’s GeForce Now is one of the most popular services of this nature and it’s more viable than ever now that Nvidia has announced full GFN support for the Steam Deck. If you aren’t already aware, GFN streams games over the cloud, allowing you to play remotely from Nvidia servers – the performance level will depend on your subscription tier.
Even before this ‘full support’ was revealed at CES 2025, you could still use GFN to stream games directly to the Deck; it just required a little extra setup.
Since we expect native performance on the Steam Deck to be poor, possibly even ‘unplayable’, anyone who primarily games on this device might want to think about investing in GeForce Now for upcoming AAA titles. While many people may resent the idea that game developers are ‘relying’ on tech like ray tracing to speed up dev time at the cost of performance, it seems like the way the industry is moving – at least for blockbuster titles such as The Great Circle and The Dark Ages. Luckily, GFN can keep handheld gamers going.
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