Valve hit a new milestone for the Steam Deck this week, revealing that it just passed 5,000 games that are Verified and Playable for its portable gaming handheld. Not bad, considering the Steam catalog has just over 50,000 games at the last count in 2021.
Games must pass four categories to be considered 'Verified' and receive that precious green checkmark. The four boxes that need to be checked are Input, Display, Seamlessness, and System Support. If a game hits anything less but can still be played with some caveats, then it's just considered 'Playable.'
'Playable' might mean that some in-game text might be too small to read or display non-Steam Deck controller icons in games. Valve has a more in-depth checklist that provides developers with everything they need before they submit their games for compatibility review. This process generally takes about a week from submission.
5,000 is a pretty impressive number to hit, considering the vast number of games on Steam. As more Steam Decks are getting shipped out, Valve has made it a point to have more Steam games become Verified or Playable, especially previously unsupported games.
Also, if you happen to be in Japan next month for the Tokyo Games Show, Valve's handing out copies of a neat little book about the Steam Deck's development, or you can just download it here. The book also gave away Valve's plans to continue building and improving on this portable PC, so we look forward to the Steam Deck 2.0. Valve isn't usually good at making 3s of anything, but maybe just this one time?
