Steam Deck performance gets a reality check with Valve's new FPS data

Since Valve announced its Steam Deck Verified program in 2021, players have found that a game’s “Verified” status doesn’t always match how well it actually runs on the handheld. Now, new Steam Deck frame rate data being shared by Valve itself can help players dig deeper into the performance they can expect from many Steam Deck games.

Valve has been collecting anonymized frame rate data from Steam players who opt in since February. Yesterday evening, the company announced it has started sharing that data on many Steam Store pages as averages and histograms for both the Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED.

Valve acknowledges that players enabling VSync or frame rate limits can bias the collected data somewhat and that the measurements don’t account for custom in-game settings that Steam Deck users may tinker with to get a game running. Regardless, Valve says it has nonetheless “found that the framerate data consolidates around relatively narrow ranges.”

Beyond the badge

This kind of data can be extremely useful for distinguishing between the wide range of performance levels that can exist among “Verified” Steam Deck games. Both Cyberpunk 2077 and Skyrim: Special Edition earn the same Steam Deck Verified badge, for instance, but the former sees average Deck frame rates in the 30–40 FPS range, while the latter usually achieves 50–60 FPS on the hardware.

Those are pretty good reported Steam Deck frame rates for an officially “Unsupported” game…

Valve’s frame rate data is even more useful for games that the company insists are “Unsupported” on Steam Deck because their “graphics setting cannot be configured to run well” on the hardware or because Valve is “still working on adding support for this game.” Despite warnings like these, games like Starfield, Silent Hill 2, and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, to name just a few, all show extremely playable frame rates reported by actual Steam Deck users. Assassin’s Creed Syndicate in particular approaches a 60 FPS average on the Steam Deck OLED hardware despite its “Unsupported” status.