My acquantance Gardiner Byrant recently released a video that, in part, goes over why Valve should slow down the Steam Deck Verified process. As it currently stands at the time of writing this, we’re at 1,929 titles on the Steam Deck that are either Verified or Playable, according to ProtonDB. Over 1,000 of those titles are Verified, while the rest are Playable. That’s a big jump from the 825 that we had a month ago with the Deck’s launch.

The problem, however, is it seems the testing is done in limited capacity, because some who play these games experience issues in the long run. As eager as Yoshida from Sony might have been to showcase God of War on the Deck, some players have evidently reported problems later on in the game. Gardiner himself reported that the game can at times “slow to a crawl” and then eventually lock the system. Horizon Zero Dawn is another case where it might be “Verified” but in reality players have reported problems such as low framerates and the right joystick only working in menus after resuming the game from sleep. Gardiner has also reported Metal Gear Solid V simply not launching at all, even though it may be “Verified.” Is Valve perhaps being a little too aggressive getting the number bigger?

This is what leads me to believe why Valve is now crowdsourcing feedback for playing games on the Deck. After playing a “Verified” game, players can let Valve know whether it really was a “Verified” experience after opting in to the Feedback feature.

is this game deck verified Image credit: store.steampowered.com

The blog post mentions that the data collected from this system “won’t directly change the Deck compatibility category for a title,” but rather it allows players to let Valve know that the process they’ve built “is enabling the experiences we all want it to.”

Here Valve yet again relies on crowdsourcing to do the work for them. At the same time I’m hoping the feedback players give will at least make the verification process a bit smoother. No one is going to want to buy a Verified title only to find out later on there are multiple issues with input, framerate, and other hassles. I understand Valve wants to get as many titles tested as possible, but I really think they need to be a bit more thorough with their testing.

Cover image credit: store.steampowered.com