Steam Deck opened a big door for PC catalogues on a handheld — but that little green Verified tick has real requirements behind it. Here's what we work through on a port.
Everything must be reachable with the Deck's controls — no assuming a mouse. Menus, text entry and in-game actions all need sensible controller mappings and clear on-screen glyphs.
Text and UI that are fine on a 27-inch monitor can be unreadable on a handheld. Verified expects legible text and interface at the Deck's native resolution.
The game has to run well at good default settings out of the box — no dropping the player into a config screen first. That means profiling on the actual hardware and shipping sensible defaults for it.
A native Linux build via eON or a full port gives the most predictable result on the Deck's SteamOS. We target it deliberately rather than leaving it to chance.
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