Valve wants Steam Deck owners to help assess its compatibility ratings

Valve wants Steam Deck owners to help assess how its compatibility ratings are shaping up.

The company has introduced a new opt-in feedback feature to gather information about titles that are Steam Deck Verified, letting it collect objective performance data that can be used to understand how the technical side of its review process is working.

For context, Valve intends to review every single Steam title to see how well they handle on Steam Deck, eventually handing them a rating of Verified, Playable, Unsupported, or Unknown to let would-be players know what sort of experience to expect.

In a new post on the Steam Blog, Valve explained Steam Deck owners may now be asked to provide feedback once they exit a play session.

"After playing a game on Deck, you may be presented with the question 'Can we occasionally ask you for feedback?'. Your decision on whether to participate is saved to the new Steam Deck 'Ask Me For Feedback' option in your account preferences and can be changed at any time," wrote the company.

"Opting in to this system by answering yes means that your Deck may start asking you direct questions about your experiences. For example, after playing a Verified title, we may ask you whether that rating matches the experience you just had in the game."

Valve noted that data collected by its feedback system won't directly change Deck compatibility ratings, but will instead help the company understand whether its review process is hitting the mark.

"Ultimately the Deck compatibility ratings are about the overall experience: the definition of 'working well' is succeeding at enabling current and future Deck customers to find the experiences they want. We want to make sure we're doing that, or identify the titles for which your experiences don't match your expectations," added the company.

The Steam Deck launched just over a month ago. In our review, Game Developer publisher Kris Graft called the console "one of the most interesting, borderline magical pieces of game hardware available today" and suggested the Deck would provide developers with a legitimate way to reach even more players.