The absolute brilliance of this entire system is how Steam / Valve deals with the Deck hardware. Because you might think, at first sight, it just downloads the

The absolute brilliance of this entire system is how Steam / Valve deals with the Deck hardware. Because you might think, at first sight, it just downloads the Windows version of a game on the Deck which it the runs through its Wine-based but very optimized Win32-to-Linux layer called Proton (https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton) and that's it right? Well, that's actually wrong :) Valve learned a lot when they added MacOS support to Steam and they did the same thing for Linux and especially Linux on the Deck. When you install a game through Steam on the Deck it downloads a package made available by the developer for the Deck whenever possible. So the "Verified for Deck" games could also very much be "optimized for the Deck" games which means: - They can have a UX completely optimized for the Deck (looking at you, Rimworld) - They can contain models, shaders and textures especially optimized for the AMD APU And last but not least: - While the developer - ofcourse - is just able to test and deliver the Win32 binary on Proton and be done with it (looking at you, Elden Ring) they can also create a specific Linux binary optimized for the AMD APU in the Deck!