Steam Deck has almost 900 playable and verified games at launch, but there's a lack of multiplayer titles

After much anticipation, the revolutionary handheld device, Steam Deck, has officially launched in the US, UK, Canada, and some other parts of the European Union.

Developed by PC gaming giant Valve, the Steam Deck promises a variety of PC games, from AAA to indie titles, in the palm of your hand. While the device has been criticized by reviewers for the "unfinished" nature of the software as a whole, the Steam Deck has received overwhelmingly positive reviews in general.

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Steam Deck has almost 450 verified games and over 400 playable games at launch

While the personal computer market is divided between three types of desktop operating systems: Microsoft’s Windows, Apple’s macOS, and the open-source Linux, the gaming market is dominated by Windows. While there is a wide variety of Linux and macOS compatible titles, they pale in comparison to the vast number of Windows titles.

The Deck ruins a custom version of Arch-Linux called SteamOS 3.0. Valve has promised to bring the majority of the Steam library (bar the hardware limit like VR) onto the Deck. To achieve this target and run all games which don’t have a native Linux port, Valve has developed a software compatibility layer called Proton, which enables Windows-native games to run on SteamOS 3.0 and by extension on the Deck.

Valve has set a standard rating chart to determine the expected performance of a game on the Deck. Verified titles are expected to run smoothly on the Deck without any issues, whereas playable titles can be played well, but they may have minor issues such as small intangible text or the keyboard not prompting automatically.

Over the last few weeks, Valve has been trying to get as many titles verified for the Steam Deck as possible. As of this writing, the number of verified titles stands at 448 and the number of playable titles stands at 419, which puts the total number of available games for the Deck at launch at 867.

This alone makes the deck the first console to be launched with such a large library. This number also does not take into consideration the fact that Valve is testing and verifying games every day. By the end of its first week, the device could easily have a game library in the thousands.

All in all, the Steam Deck is shaping up to be one of the best gaming devices of this generation. Hopefully, Valve will be able to smoothen out a few kinks in the software and make it easily available across the world.