Developers Delighted With Steam Deck: 'It Works Really Well'
Developers who have had hands-on experience with Steam Deck are impressed with the performance of Valve's portable platform.
A few weeks before the shipping of first Steam Decks to pre-orderers begins, it seems that the device from Valve has a good chance for success. At least if you believe some of the developers who were asked about the device (via PC Gamer).
Dev Friendly Steam Deck
Developers admit that working with Steam Deck is much easier than it might seem.
Jonathan Smars of Iron Gate, the studio responsible for Valheim, shares this opinion.
- The creator of admitted that Iron Gate's game runs great on Steam Deck works, and was full of admiration how well the new handheld looks in an interview with PC Gamer:
"I was surprised how well games work on it without any changes, and how good it feels to play on it. "The graphic settings need to be set down a bit compared to my high end PC of course, but I'm still impressed with what such a small handheld can handle without any platform specific optimizations," Jonathan Smlrs said for PC Gamer.
A similar opinion was expressed by Raymond Doerr from SixtyGig Games, the studio responsible for the strategy game Rise to Ruins..
- While he points out some minor issues with the port of his game, his assessment of Steam Deck is also positive:
"I did have some issues with controls, but my game is not designed for a controller at all, it doesn't even have the code to detect/respond to controller inputs. The touchpad for the mouse, I dare say, might be one of the best I've ever used.
I'll need to design a controller layout for it, as well as write controller support for the game, but I suspect my game will be playable on it when that's done."
Unfortunately, the developers couldn't go into too much detail due to a signed confidentiality agreement, but their feedback, despite noting some isolated issues, is overwhelmingly positive.
Of course, the things that are important to developers may not coincide with what gamers expect from Steam Deck, but all signs on heaven and earth indicate that ports of games to Valve's platform will be prepared accordingly.
The cards will be laid out on the table on February 28, when the first devices will begin shipping.
