Steam Deck release date “still on track” for February, says Valve

No more delays for the first batch of handheld PCs

“First and foremost, we’re on track to ship Steam Deck on time. Global pandemic, supply issues, and shipping issues notwithstanding, it looks like we’ll be able to start getting these out the door by the end of February”, so says the post.

Valve’s post also confirms that testing for theSteam Deck Verified programmeis ticking along; if you haven’t seen this, it’s a rating system that Valve will apply to games on Steam, providing at-a-glance info to users about how compatible a game will be with the Steam Deck. Games with the “Verified” rating will work fine immediately, “Playable” games will run but might need some settings tweaks or be missing some features, and “Unsupported” games simply won’t function as required. You should start seeing such labels on Steam game listings soon.

For their part, Valve are looking to maximise the compatibility of Steam’s library, including offering help to other developers andupdating their own, older games. Some simply won’t take, though - Steam Deck designers Greg Coomer and Lawrence Yang told us last year that they want to “get as close to 100%” of the Steam catalogue to play nice, but “not every game makes sense to bring to Steam Deck - for instance, we’re all proud of Half Life: Alyx, but it’s not a game that Steam Deck was meant to run.”