Unofficial documentation
Steam Deck Compatibility Review checklist for developers
Work in progress
This checklist is still in development. If you spot something wrong or have feedback, contact me.
Checklist estimate
Unknown
Start checking items to estimate the likely Steam Deck outcome.
- Steam Deck Compatibility Review
- 0/26
- Steamworks recommendations
- 0/4
- Community recommendations
- 0/1
0 / 31 items
Steam Deck Compatibility Review
Checks based on the issues Steam can show in a Steam Deck Compatibility Review.
Performance
Input
Seamlessness
Proton Requirements
Display
Game Features
Steamworks recommendations
Taken from Steamworks: Getting your game ready for Steam Deck and Steam Machine, but not directly flagged by the Steam Deck Compatibility Review.
Game Features
Graphics
Input
Community recommendations
A few extra things that may still be worth checking.
Game Features
General notes
About
This checklist exists because games still ship with hidden graphics settings, or sync device-specific graphics settings through Steam Cloud, even in 2026. After talking to developers who cared about Steam Deck support, it became clear that a few Steam Deck details and best practices are still easy to miss. Maybe the guidance was overlooked. Maybe some of it appeared in Steamworks later.
Some developers also told me they wait months for Steam Deck Compatibility Review feedback. This does not replace Valve's review process, but it can make that waiting time more useful: a quick pre-check for Steam Deck support before the official review comes back.
A few very specific checks are hidden for now, including anti-cheat, cross-platform cloud saves, and cases that do not apply to every game. I may bring those back later behind a simple single-player or multiplayer question, so the checklist does not ask developers to answer rows that make no sense for their game.
The first version came out of a conversation with Steam Flow about where the Steam Deck Compatibility Review, developer assumptions, reviewers, and real players do not always line up.