Valve has confirmed that there are now over 1000 "verified" Steam Deck games - that is, games that Valve has tested to ensure that they run without issues or bugs on its new handheld system.
In an update posted to the Steam Community, Valve acknowledged that while its tough testing regime may result in "false negatives" - games that may fail to secure a "verified" badge even though they run pretty well on Steam Deck - it was preferable to "false positives".
"Our existing standards for titles to get a Verified or a Playable rating are very high," Valve wrote in the update (thanks, NME). "If a game shows controller glyphs 99 per cent of the time but tells you to 'press F' sometimes during gameplay, that's Playable, not Verified. If 99 per cent of a game's functionality is accessible, but accessing one optional in-game minigame crashes, or one tutorial video doesn't render, that's Unsupported.
- Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is Steam Deck verified ahead of the JRPG's PC launch next week so that you can play "in the bathroom… wherever you want"
- Just weeks later, Ubisoft walks back some disappointing Assassin's Creed Shadows news: it will be fully Steam Deck Verified "despite the fact the team thought it would not be the case"
"This is by design: around the launch timeframe, we believed it was more valuable to prevent false positives ("this game is Verified but part of it doesn't work"), even at the cost of some appearance of false negatives ("this game is Unsupported but I didn't notice anything wrong with it").
"Even with the current standards, at the rate both we and partners are making improvements, we expect you'll see many titles transition over the next few weeks from Playable, or even Unsupported, to Verified," the post continues. "We also expect our standards and thinking will adjust as we move farther from launch and get much more feedback from customers and developers."
In related news, last week Valve boss Gabe Newell confirmed that there are currently no plans for the company to introduce a game subscription service, like Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass or EA's EA Play.
Despite the release of its highly-anticipated and all-new handheld system, Newell says that while he understands that subscription services are "clearly a popular option" with some gamers, he doesn't "think it's something [Valve] needs to do" despite their popularity.
He did, however, suggest that the company would be open to working with third-party partners such as Microsoft to "get [subscription services] on Steam".
We also learned that despite the popularity and scarcity of its new handheld system, Valve has no plans to increase the retail price of Steam Deck.
Still undecided on Steam Deck? In our Steam Deck review, we said: "Steam Deck is everything Valve promised, a handheld with all the potential of a PC and a huge library of games ready to go," giving it 4.5 stars out of 5.
Looking for something new to get stuck into? Here are the best PC games right now.
