So I have a Steam Deck, and if you have one you know most games sold on Steam have a compatibility rating. On valve’s rating scale, a game is Verified, Playable, Unsupported, or Unknown.
Verified means it works out of the box, Playable means it works but there may be some little things that impact the experience, like launchers not supporting gamepads and needing to use the touchscreen or touchpads to start the game; or games where the text is too small on the Deck’s screen get this rating as well.
So this rating system is all well and good, and it’s clearly better than nothing, but Valve hasn’t tested every game, and you might want to play a game in your deck that says Unsupported or Unknown. That’s where ProtonDB comes in.
So The Steam Deck runs on Linux, not Windows, which is why Valve developed Proton, to run Windows games on Linux at a compatibility never before seen with predecessor programs like Wine or similar commercial solutions like Crossover for Mac. ProtonDB is a website designed to cover the gaps in Valves Deck compatibility ratings. It rates games as Native, Platinum, Gold, Silver, bronze or borked. Native means it is a game specifically designed to run on Linux. Platinum is reserved for those Windows games that run perfectly without any tinkering whatsoever. Gold means a tiny bit of tinkering, such as switching over to a specific version of Proton instead of the default, and silver means more tinkering than Gold. Borked means no amount of settings or files changed will get it to work.
But let’s say you’re out and about with your steam deck and didn’t bring another computer and your phone just dropped and cracked the screen. While you’re waiting to get it fixed at a local shop, you hop your steam deck onto the local wifi and look at sales. So many sales… How are you going to know what ProtonDB says about all these games? Decky has the solution.
Decky is a fan developed software to install plugins into the steam deck, expanding its capability however you want. For our situation mentioned above, decky provides a plugin that integrates protonDB right into the steam deck operating system. Once it’s installed, every game will display an icon on the game’s info page showing it’s rating and tapping on it will take you to the games protonDB page.
With that said, I hope you find protonDB useful too.
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