It’s a nice way of seeing which games can boot up, but using it as way to gauge if its a “great experience” is one I don’t think is accurate.
I think this is a misconception many have. Somewhere in an intereview or an article Valve stated and explained the Verified program is not about how well a game runs on Steam Deck, but a checkmark of a few important points. Even if the game runs badly, it might be verified. The reasoning and greater idea is not how well it runs on this specific hardware, but compared to the Windows counterpart. Meaning if the game runs 20 fps on Windows, and it runs exactly the same on Linux with Proton, then it is verified. Now you can argue and disagree, that is fine. But I think that was the goal of Valve with this verification process.
Steam Deck verification includes things like text being legible and buttons showing up correctly in prompts and mapping, etc. For example, Civilization VI has a Linux native version but is not verified because some game text is too small, and it might require some typing using the virtual keyboard which may not pop up automatically when required.
I know, that is what I meant with “checkmark of a few important points”. But the game can run horrible, due to bad optimization leading to bad performance in example. Lot of people think the performance is the verification process, but it isn’t. I was talking about the misconception about performance factor.
That’s because performance is a criteria for getting verified:
default configuration: the game must ship with a default configuration on Deck that results in a playable framerate.
Source: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/compat#DeckCompatibilityChecklist
There is no “target framerate” though, so what’s considered “playable” differs from tester to tester.
