Valve has manually selected the game to be run with proton experimental under linux, and it works on my linux desktop. So it will probably at least run on Deck, but I don’t imagine it’s a very controller-friendly game. I have no idea about Mac.
Comet has a list of supported requests on their github readme, and at least the achievement requests seem to be present. I’m not sure if Heroic utilizes them though
Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed Collection is a blast if you’re okay with a kart racer.
Flatout 2 is the OG combat racer.
If you’re looking for a true “racing sim” type game I would probably recommend one of the Assetto Corsa games, either the original or competizione.
CarX Drift Racing Online is probably not what you expect, but is really fun. Not exactly a traditional “racing” game because you don’t compete for time, but rather compete for “drift points,” with longer/wider drifts getting more score. It has a surprisingly thorough singleplayer mode, and the multiplayer is relatively relaxed. Multiplayer is setup in an open-world style; you join a big lobby and can just drive around with friends or randoms without actually competing for anything, although people in each lobby can start competitions that everyone else can opt-in to. The main reason I’m recommending it is it has very thorough car customization and is a chill, non-competitive driving game, whether that be singleplayer or multiplayer.
I thought this might be a similar situation to Ghost of Tsushima where a PSN account is only required for online play, but Ragnarok has no multiplayer.
I don’t understand why Sony is so insistent on this. PSN is still unsupported in 170+ territories; this requirement is just going to turn most of those “would-be” buyers in those territories into pirates.
These don’t exactly “fit in” with the rest of the list, but on Deck I’ve personally had a blast with CarX Drift Racing Online and the Sonic &ASRT Collection
This game has been free on Epic, free on GOG through Prime gaming, and free through gamepass. Does anyone know if they’re counting those free claims as “sales”?
Considering Counter-Strike 2 completely dropped Mac support, I highly doubt it
Helldivers 2’s anti-cheat (nProtect GameGuard) is kernel-level on Windows, but has a userspace fallback for linux
Edit: see this post
Questionable privacy/security practices: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/30/23486753/anker-eufy-security-camera-cloud-private-encryption-authentication-storage
I don’t think it’s possible to filter the trending games that way, but you can filter the all-time highest rated games that way by using the “Platforms” filter in instant search: https://steamdb.info/instantsearch/?refinementList[oslist][0]=Steam Deck Verified&refinementList[oslist][1]=Steam Deck Playable
It also has an option to filter the search by year(s) and by number of ratings/followers, so you could select the current and/or previous year to see what has been trending well-received and popular in the (relatively) short-term.
You could probably play the SCS Truck Simulator games basically indefinitely.
Vampire Survivors is an absurdly addicting Deck game, and can be considered grindy if you go for the eggs late-game.
Deep Rock Galactic is a good one too, if you’re okay with no aim assist and playing solo or with randoms.
Yes, a lot of games work fine without precompiled shaders. Others, like Apex Legends or Rocket League, are a complete mess (at least for the first few minutes of gameplay - it used to be much worse but DXVK 2.0 helped a lot with this). You’ve probably just only tried the games that work fine.
“Having to deal with pre-shader work” that you mentioned is a good thing. Without it, games will stutter more. And you always have the option to skip it or disable it entirely.
But otherwise, it’s a classic delimma:
Through proton, yes. The game has always worked with anti-cheat disabled (so no PvP multiplayer), but proton-compatible anti-cheat has been supported since early April, so all multiplayer functionality has worked since then.
This article is referring to a recent MCC patch that broke proton anti-cheat for about a week, thankfully it’s fixed now.
Well Respawn explicitly enabling Easy Anti-Cheat’s Proton support (plus the game being Steam Deck Verified) is about as official as we’re gonna get for the vast majority of multiplayer games. I think it’s more of an issue around EA firing 99% of their QA testers…
Considering less than a month ago they were making headlines for mistakenly banning linux players (but eventually unbanning them, thankfully), makes me wonder how many of those bans are false-positives.
I was one of the linux players who was banned. It took them about 8 days for them to unban me in-game, and then it took another week for my EA ban history to change from “active” to “overturned,” with an email from EA. No apology, no sort of in-game compensation, just basically a “be thankful you can play again.”
~25% of the linux players are still banned. Some definitely cheated, some I would be shocked if they cheated, just considering the amount of hours and money they had put into their account, along with how enthusiastic they were about getting themselves (and others) unbanned. So shocked that I’m almost certain they’re false positives. Which makes me hesitant to keep playing - what if that happens to me? If they treat their Steam Deck and linux users this way, is that a game I really want to support?
More info from the article: quality mode is 1440p 30fps, and performance mode is 960p (upscaled to 1440p using FSR2) 60fps. Although late-game, specifically the big cities in act 3, can dip into mid-20fps range
It’s a shooter with no aim assist, and the UI isn’t setup particularly well for controller (at least not yet)