Valve officially started updating SteamVR games with the ‘Unsupported’ tag for Steam Deck compatibility.
Back in October of last year, Valve announced the new label system for Steam Deck, which indicates the level of compatibility expected for any given game. There’s a Verified label for games that run great, Playable for games that run but might need extra configuration, Unsupported for games that officially aren’t certified to run on the system, and Unknown for games that haven’t had their compatibility checked yet.
When Valve announced this label system, it also announced that SteamVR games would be labeled as Unsupported. This doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t be able to try run a VR game that’s marked as Unsupported — Valve has said that it’s “technically” possible, but not optimized for it.
As noticed by Brad Lynch on Twitter, Valve started the process of marking all VR-only titles as unsupported this week. We’ve cross-checked Lynch’s tweet with listings on SteamDB and can confirm that titles like Half-Life: Alyx now fall in the Unsupported category under Steam Deck compatibility, found in the information tab.
While we knew this was coming, it marks the beginning of the process ahead of Steam Deck’s launch in a few weeks time. Despite this, we expect some users to try run VR content using Steam Deck connected to PC VR-enabled headsets on launch. Valve told IGN that the device has “all the connectivity” for VR but performance isn’t optimized for it. Gabe Newell himself even weighed in, suggesting a Quest could be used with Steam Deck, they just don’t guarantee anything.
Will you be trying to run VR content on a Steam Deck in the next few weeks? Let us know in the comments below.
