Valve’s Steam Deck “Verified” program is pretty great, but extremely specific to… well, the Steam Deck. But now that SteamOS is expanding into other non-Steam Deck devices, we’re going to need something a little more general to tell if a Steam game will work on a particular device. Enter the SteamOS Compatibility system, a rating that will be similar but separate to the Steam Deck Verified status.
According to Valve’s announcement post, a game needs to pass a pretty low bar to be marked as “SteamOS Compatible” on the store. Basically, it needs to boot up on SteamOS (either by offering a Linux version of the game or just running in the Proton compatibility layer) and not have any middleware that breaks in the Linux-based OS. “Middleware” means any of the extra software that a game relies upon to boot up, run, and get you your primary experience—some elements like the anti-cheat in popular multiplayer games might be a stumbling block here.
Valve
In short, if you can get the game working without any massive or insurmountable hurdles, it’s SteamOS Compatible. Valve might mark the game with a couple of warning flags, like requiring an active internet connection for first-time setup or needing a mouse/touchscreen for the game’s separate launcher program. (By the way, if you sell a game on Steam and it needs a separate launcher, everyone hates you.) But those things won’t preclude a game from the SteamOS Compatible badge.
At the time of writing, only the Legion Go S Powered by SteamOS (yep, that’s its full and terrible name) is officially part of the program, and it doesn’t launch until later this month. But there are reportedly more SteamOS-powered handhelds on the way, and I get the feeling that this compatibility badge will be helpful for others as well, like those rolling their own SteamOS hardware with projects like Bazzite.