Valve Just Made Some “Huge” Changes to Steam Deck

Valve just made some changes to the Steam Deck that owners of the console have described as “huge” and “much-needed.” It has been four calendar years since Valve released the Steam Deck, and with the Steam Deck 2 years away, there is plenty of runway for Valve to improve the handheld machine. Since 2022, it has issued updates regularly, but the latest update is one of the best yet, at least according to users of the Steam Deck Reddit page.

For those who missed it, Valve has released a new Steam Deck Beta Client Update, which comes with a slew of changes. And a big focus of the update is improving the Verification system, which isn’t great right now. Recently, and since 2022, far too many PC games have been Steam Deck Verified, yet have not been properly and fully optimized and realized for the handheld. To this end, earlier this month, Borderlands 4 somehow earned Steam Deck Verification. We say that “somehow” because it does not work well with the Valve handheld.

What’s New With the Steam Deck Update

Valve has heard this feedback and is working on solving this problem. To this end, Steam Deck users can now attack hardware specs when writing or updating a Steam User Review on a game’s store page. More than this, there is now an option to provide anonymized framerate data. When this is enabled, Steam will collect your gameplay framerate data, stored without connection to your Steam account, but identified with the hardware you are using. According to Valve, this data will provide insight into a game’s compatibility with Steam Deck. That said, the feature is still in beta.

“Honestly, I think this is huge,” writes one Steam Deck user about the update over on Reddit. “We’ve all been pretty disappointed with the Verified program lately, and this is a step in the right direction. You can now also leave specific feedback if you disagree with a verified rating!”

A second user adds: “Wow! Much-needed changes.” A third user further adds: “Steam Deck experience keeps getting better.”

Read Next

2026’s Best Game Is Steam Deck Verified at Launch

The update also has a few other improvements and fixes. For example, the Steam Deck now displays the highest resolution capsule image available for any given featured game in the Recent Games carousel when online. Meanwhile, the bug that was preventing some users from installing games if their library was too big has also been fixed. There are some other fixes, but they aren’t as noteworthy in comparison.

All of that said, and as always, feel free to leave a comment or two letting us know what you think, or join the conversation over on the ComicBook Forum.