Valve’s Steam Deck will have a rating system to tag compatible games

Valve is developing a rating system for the Steam Deck that will allow users to see which games are compatible with the upcoming handheld.

Dubbed ‘Steam Deck Verified,’ the system will mark games for being ‘verified’ (confirmed to be compatible), ‘playable’ (confirmed to be partially compatible), ‘unsupported’ (confirmed to be incompatible) or ‘unknown’ (compatibility yet to be determined).

These will appear via badges on the roughly 50,000 games that are available on Steam. Valve says verified games will have support controllers, Steam Deck’s default resolution (1280×800 or 1280×720) and other basic game functionalities.

Set to begin shipping in Canada and other countries in December, the Steam Deck is a Switch-like device that can play high-quality games on the go. With beefier specs, however, the system supports native playback of more intensive games like Control, which the Switch can only play via the cloud.

Naturally, this makes the console pricier than the Switch, starting at $499 CAD for the 64GB model and going up to $819 for an SSD-powered 512GB model.