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Steam Deck games fall into exactly four buckets — Verified, Playable, Unsupported and Unknown — and only one of them means Valve has actually tested and rejected the game. The other three get confused constantly, and the confusion costs people money on refundable purchases they did not need to make.
To make this concrete rather than theoretical, we checked four current games against Valve’s compatibility data directly while writing this. Every status below is a live reading, not a recollection.
The four ratings, with real examples
| Rating | What it means | A game currently in it |
|---|---|---|
| Verified | Valve tested it and it passed every criterion: runs on SteamOS, controller works with no setup, text is legible at Deck resolution, launchers work on a gamepad | Valheim, Scarlet Skips |
| Playable | Valve tested it and it works, but something needs you: a manual control tweak, small text, a launcher you touch the screen for | — |
| Unsupported | Valve tested it and it does not work on Deck | Shroom and Gloom |
| Unknown | Valve has not tested it yet. No claim either way | Wardogs |
The distinction that actually matters: Unknown is not Unsupported
This is the error worth fixing. Unknown means untested, and the review queue is a queue — new releases sit in it, small releases sit in it longer, and a game that came out four days ago has usually not reached the front. Wardogs launched into Early Access this week with more than 175,000 concurrent players and is still marked Unknown. That is a statement about Valve’s testing backlog, not about the game.
Unsupported is the opposite: a tested, negative result. Shroom and Gloom is a small first-person deckbuilder that most people would assume runs fine on a handheld, and Valve says it does not. That is genuinely useful information, and it is the one rating you should treat as a hard stop.
So the practical hierarchy for a purchase decision is not four levels of quality. It is: Unsupported is a no. Verified is a yes. Playable is a yes with homework. Unknown is unanswered — and unanswered skews toward working, because most PC games do run under Proton.
Why Verified does not mean “runs well”
Verified is a compatibility certification. It covers whether the game functions correctly on the hardware. It does not certify a frame rate, it does not certify battery life, and it does not test your specific save file.
That gap is widest in games whose load scales with what the player built. A Verified survival game can be effortless on hour one and strained on a large late-game base, because the certification was awarded to the executable, not to your world. We went into that specific case in our piece on Valheim on Deck, and the reasoning generalises: for anything with player-built complexity, colony sims and factory games included, read Verified as “it will start and the buttons will work”.
What is still unknown
Valve publishes the outcome of its compatibility review but not a per-game test report, so there are things nobody outside Valve can tell you:
- Why a specific game was marked Unsupported. The rating is issued without a public failure reason.
- When an Unknown game will be reviewed. There is no published queue or ETA.
- Whether a rating was rechecked after a major update. Ratings attach to the app, and Valve does not publish an audit trail of re-tests — so a Verified badge earned two years ago has not necessarily been revisited since.
- How a game performs. Not part of the programme at all, in any rating.
Community-run performance databases fill some of this in, and they are listed in our directory of Steam tools and discovery sites. Treat them as crowd-sourced reports rather than as an extension of Valve’s programme.
Frequently asked questions
What does Steam Deck Verified mean?
Valve has tested the game and it passed four criteria: it runs on SteamOS, controller input works without configuration, text is legible at the Deck resolution, and any launcher or sign-in screen works on a gamepad.
What is the difference between Playable and Verified?
Both mean the game works. Playable means something requires manual intervention from you, such as changing a control setting, touching the screen for a launcher, or squinting at small text.
Does Unknown mean a game will not work on Steam Deck?
No. Unknown means Valve has not reviewed it yet. Many Unknown games run perfectly. It is an absence of a rating, not a negative rating.
Does Steam Deck Verified guarantee 60fps?
No. The programme certifies compatibility, not performance. Valve does not test or publish frame rates or battery life as part of any rating.
Can a game lose its Steam Deck Verified status?
Ratings can be changed by Valve, but there is no published schedule for re-testing after updates, so a badge may reflect a review from some time ago.
Can I still buy and play an Unsupported game on Steam Deck?
You can buy and install it, but Valve has tested it and determined it does not work properly on the hardware. Unsupported is the one rating worth treating as a hard stop.
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