How we rate playability
Last reviewed June 2026.
Valve's Verified badge answers a yes/no question: does the game run? We answer the question buyers actually ask — how well, at which settings, and is it worth it. Because the Steam Machine and Steam Frame are brand new, most numbers here are estimated, not measured — and we always say which.
239 of our 15,965 games carry a real, community-measured Steam Deck frame-rate (from deck-verified.games); the rest are derived from each title's SteamOS / Steam Deck compatibility, not benchmarked. See the measured-on-Steam-Deck collection for the cohort with real numbers.
From raw data to a verdict
SteamSpy ranks the catalogue by lifetime owners — that sets which games we rate and their order.
Valve's official SteamOS / Deck category (Verified · Playable · Unsupported) is the input for every title.
We map that category onto each device's GPU tier (the Machine ≈ 6× Deck) into a Low/Med/High colour.
Real FPS — community reports and launch benchmarks — replaces the estimate the moment we hold it.
Where the 15,965 verdicts come from
Computed live from the catalogue at build — not a hand-typed figure. Every Steam Machine verdict is derived from Valve's SteamOS compatibility; a subset additionally carries a real measured Deck frame-rate. The full cross-section — verdict split, controller levels, ProtonDB tiers and recommended specs against the Machine's ceiling — is published as a citable dataset report: The State of SteamOS Compatibility.
The four confidence labels
Every verdict carries exactly one of these — the label is part of the verdict, never fine print.
Real FPS from published launch-review benchmarks (Tom's Hardware, Gamers Nexus, Digital Foundry, Notebookcheck) or a corroborated community report on the actual device.
Derived from the game's requirements mapped onto the device's GPU tier (the Machine is ~RX 7600 / RTX 4060 class, 8 GB VRAM, a 1080p/1440p part — not the native-4K box the marketing implies).
Inferred from Valve's official SteamOS / Steam Deck category (Verified / Playable / Unsupported), mapped to a coarse Low/Med/High colour for the Machine's roughly 6×-Deck GPU. A colour, not a measured frame-rate: it tells you whether the title runs on SteamOS, not exactly how fast.
Submitted by readers and shown once enough reports corroborate — with the report count visible, so you can weigh the evidence yourself.
What the colours mean
Green — Runs great
A stable, comfortable experience at that settings tier.
Amber — Playable, with caveats
Needs FSR, a frame cap, or a settings compromise to hold up.
Red — Struggles
Below a comfortable framerate even with help.
Worked examples: input → colour
The honest way to earn trust is to show the reasoning, not just the verdict. Here are three real catalogue titles run through the exact process — two derived, one measured.
Cyberpunk 2077
- Input: Valve rates it Steam Deck Verified — it runs well on a ~1.6 TFLOP handheld at 800p/30.
- Scale up: the Steam Machine's GPU is roughly 6× the Deck — about RX 7600 class with 8 GB VRAM, a comfortable 1080p part.
- Verdict: a title already comfortable on the Deck has wide headroom here → green at 1080p. We surface it as a colour, never a fabricated FPS — its “High” tier carries an estimated-from-compatibility note that very demanding titles may prefer Medium for a locked 60.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
- Input: Valve marks it Steam Deck Unsupported — it does not run cleanly under SteamOS / Proton as shipped.
- Scale up: raw GPU power is irrelevant when the blocker is compatibility — a faster chip cannot fix an anti-cheat, launcher or driver mismatch.
- Verdict: Unsupported on SteamOS → red, because the honest answer for a console buyer is “expect friction,” not a frame-rate. A community fix can move this; we'd relabel it the moment it's corroborated.
Hogwarts Legacy
- Input: 4 corroborating community reports on deck-verified.games land at a real 60 fps on the actual Steam Deck.
- No estimation: because we hold a measured figure, it overrides the derived Deck colour — the FPS is a fact, labelled community-measured, not inferred.
- Verdict: 60 fps clears our comfort threshold → green, shown with the report count so you can weigh the evidence yourself.
Why VR is rated differently
The Steam Frame can run a game two ways — natively on its mobile chip, or streamed from a host PC. Valve only certifies native play, so we rate native status separately and treat streamed quality as a reference to the host's rating.
Sources
deck-verified.games ↗
Community-aggregated, real measured Steam Deck frame-rates and report counts. The source for all 239 measured figures.
SteamSpy
Catalogue coverage and popularity ranking (by lifetime owners), which sets which 15,965 titles we cover and the order we surface them.
Valve / SteamOS
The official Verified / Playable / Unsupported compatibility category that every derived colour starts from.
Honesty rules
We treat “4K 60” as a claim to test, not a headline. We never present an estimate as a measurement: every verdict carries its confidence label (measured / estimated / derived / community), and a colour-only derived tier is never dressed up as a benchmark.
Common questions
Are the Steam Machine and Steam Frame verdicts measured?
No. Both consoles are brand new, so their colours are derived from Valve's official SteamOS / Steam Deck compatibility category for each title, then mapped onto the Machine's roughly RX 7600-class GPU (about 6× the Deck). A derived verdict is a colour, not a benchmarked frame-rate, and it always carries a 'derived' label.
Which games have real measured numbers?
239 of our 15,965 games carry a real, community-measured Steam Deck frame-rate sourced from deck-verified.games. You can browse exactly that cohort in the measured-on-Steam-Deck collection.
What do green, amber and red mean?
Green means it runs great — a stable, comfortable experience at that settings tier. Amber means playable with caveats — it needs FSR, a frame cap or a settings compromise to hold up. Red means it struggles — below a comfortable framerate even with help.
Where does your data come from?
Catalogue coverage and popularity ranking come from SteamSpy; SteamOS / Deck compatibility categories come from Valve; and real measured Deck frame-rates come from community reports aggregated by deck-verified.games. Launch-day Machine and Frame measurements from published reviews are added as devices ship.