The Steam Deck Has a BIG Problem

- I love the Steam Deck. It has been my primary gaming system for the last couple of years. But in 2026, I've gotta ask, "Is the Steam Deck still worth it?" Now, the reason I even started thinking about this was that the other day I sat down to finally play "Expedition 33" on my Steam Deck. After about 15 minutes, though. The visuals were so rough that I dove into the settings only to see that almost everything was locked. And, I mean, the performance is fine at like 30 FPS-ish, but, like, the problem is for a game with this many close-ups of the characters I kinda bounced off. Looked like the Switch 1. I switched to the Xbox Ally X, which did immediately look a lot better. But not everyone has the luxury of just picking up a different handheld. Now, I have recommended the Steam Deck a lot, and it has consistently been my answer to, "What should I get for portable gaming," because it is just so good in so many ways. I mean, SteamOS is incredible, the library is massive, the hardware just works. I mean, when the OLED model came out in 2023, that became the Steam Deck for me. But the OLED was a screen upgrade, not a performance upgrade. The chip inside essentially dates back to 2022. It's just shrunk down to be a little bit more efficient and with slightly faster memory on the OLED. Now, this was just fine back when it launched. But in 2026, it's really starting to show its age. And it's not just the performance that makes it hard to recommend. Even if you wanted to buy one right now, the Steam Deck OLED is straight up out of stock in the US. Valve has confirmed the reason as, quote, "The OLED is out of stock intermittently in some regions due to storage and memory shortages." AKA thanks to the RAM crisis. And the LCD model actually was discontinued late last year, meaning that if you wanna buy a new Steam Deck today, you're kind of outta luck. Surprise, surprise. Used prices are climbing because of it. I know we covered a lot of the reasons for this when we broke down why the Steam Machine is in so much trouble. But it really boils down to the fact that Valve is just a tiny player in hardware, and they're unable to compete for scarce memory versus the giant Lenovos and HPs of the world. All this brings us back to the question I asked myself when I fired up "Expedition 33." It's not just, "Does the Steam Deck still work," but really, "Can it handle the games that people wanna play right now in 2026?" I've been such a big fan of the Steam Deck, but I'm not sure I can keep doing that, at least without some pretty big asterisks. So let me show you what I mean with "Expedition 33." So if I pull up the settings, what you'll see is that there are essentially no graphics options. So you can change your upscaling mode and what the resolution is, but they lock all of the nitty-gritty things basically behind a filter. Like, this feels like you're playing a console game, which I don't love. At first glance, I don't think this game looks bad. But no matter what upscaling method you use, there are a lot of artifacts. And especially if I walk into like a conversation here, it's flickering and blurry. And I get it, like it's a narrative game, I should just, like, ignore it. But, to me, it's too distracting. Maybe I'm being a snob, but it looks bad enough that I don't wanna play the game on the Steam Deck. So next up, I have "Monster Hunter Wilds." Now this is not a game I would traditionally play, however, it is a very popular title that initially did not run pretty much at all on the Steam Deck. However, even though if you check it, it does show that the game's graphic settings cannot be configured to run well on the Steam Deck. There's been a patch, I think recently, that supposedly improved performance on the PC. So I wanna give it a try. Now, I'm gonna open up the options and turn the settings all the frickin' way down. Okay, that looks terrible, but we are getting 40 FPS. - [Adriana] What? Give it a sec. - If the game doesn't look good immediately, I'm like, "Eww!" Okay, you know what? Boy, that, wow, it looks like ultra-film grain every time there's a camera cut. Oh, wow. Okay, we're in. Oh, whoa, whoa. Oh, 60 FPS, uh-oh. There's so much motion it looks like we're playing at like 144p if I'm honest with you, but it feels responsive, adjacent. Wait, am I not controlling anything? Oh, am I the kid on the back 'cause I skipped all the cut scenes? No, no, no, no, no, this is not it. I would say, this is not a playable game. Next, we're going to play "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle." Now, this one actually has the opposite problem. So it shows that it is verified on Steam Deck. A lot of people say that even though this is verified, it actually runs really badly on the Steam Deck. So some of the complaints I saw in Reddit was that the game takes minutes to load sometimes and that the performance goes from being kinda decent to hitting chop town very quickly. It's probably set to already work on the Steam Deck would be my guess. Yes, it is on Steam Deck setting. So I'm not gonna touch it. I feel like, yeah, you could definitely see the upscaling, but this does feel reasonable. Although that is not a super consistent 30. I'm actually gonna go ahead and actually change that. Why is the FPS limit a thousand? I see why this is verified at first glance. This is pretty snappy from my perspective. You look at some of the other stuff we've been playing and it's clear that it's pushing it too hard. Damn, that looks pretty good. That looks pretty good. Should we go inside or should we not spoil the movie? (Alex chuckles) You've only had 50 years to watch it. - [Alex] Yeah. - Another game is "Black Myth: Wukong." Now, this is a terrific-looking game and it has the exact same error as "Monster Hunter." However, I have seen a number of people say that this game does run fine. I think the thing with the Steam Deck is because it is essentially a PC, generally speaking, you can tweak and tune it to normally get something playable. Oh, boy, that's not great. Oh, I'm seeing, that's a less than 30 number. So the thing that I'm seeing right now is that a lot of games have a lot of motion. You can technically get 30 FPS. But because you have to use so much upscaling, the problem is, is that all that fast motion just makes everything look super grainy. It almost looks like an oil painting. That being said, the performance is not horrible. It bothers me less than "Exhibition 33," which feels weird to say. - [Alex] I don't know, it bothers me. - Does it? Wait, now that I'm outta the cloud zone, I'm getting 60, 70 FPS. This is 1,000% playable. Why is this not playable? We can be talking about games all day long. I mean, there are a ton of other titles I've thought about trying like "Star Wars Outlaws." And the reason I actually bring that one up is that it is a game that runs great on the Switch 2 with ray tracing. Now, while plenty of people, myself included, complained about the $450 price point of the Switch 2 when it launched, it still absolutely outperformed the Steam Deck at a $100 less, not even to mention the fact that the Switch 2 comes with a dock and Joy-Cons and everything. Like, look, I wanna be clear. There are tons of games that run great on the Steam Deck, and I've put in over 100 hours of "Baldur's Gate 3" on this thing, and it actually recently got a Linux port that actually helped performance even more. You got titles like "Elden Ring" and "Hades II." I mean, the list goes on and on and on. I mean, the back catalog is, for the most part, really impressive. The issue here, though, isn't what this Steam Deck can do today with games that are maybe a year or two years old, it's really about the future. Because as games get more and more demanding, the gap between what the Deck can do and what people want to play is just getting wider and wider, and that's only half the problem. Because it's not just about performance anymore. There's a fairly substantial list of games that you literally can't play on the Steam Deck no matter what settings you use. And this list is getting longer, not shorter. There are the obvious ones like "Fortnite," which is completely impossible to play unless you're running Windows on your Steam Deck, which you probably shouldn't be doing. I mean, to be fair, there are options to play games like "Fortnite" using something like GeForce NOW, which did recently add a native Steam Deck version. And it works, but obviously all the normal caveats when it comes to cloud gaming apply. The bigger offender, though, is EA, is they've just rolled out their Javelin anti-cheat system, and this essentially wiped out the entire catalog on SteamOS. Not only does "Battlefield 6" not work, but "Battlefield V" and "Battlefield 1," games that used to work just fine on the Deck, completely stopped working when EA pushed Javelin updates to those older games. Same story across a lot of the EA Sports lineup. They much more care about the anti-cheat side of things than supporting the tiny player base on Steam Deck. Then there's "Black Ops 7," you know, the game that we just used on the 12-year-old PS4, what uses Activision's Ricochet anti-cheat system on PC, which straight up does not support SteamOS. "Destiny 2," Bungie has explicitly said that they will ban you if you try to play through Proton. I mean, you can go down the list. "Valorant," "League." Riot's Vanguard absolutely hates the Steam Deck. And then there's "GTA Online." Rockstar added BattlEye anti-cheat in late 2024, but they chose not to enable Linux support even though BattlEye itself actually supports it. This was bad enough that Valve actually started issuing refunds. Now, look, I get why this is happening. As popular as the Steam Deck is among enthusiasts, I mean, it's still a tiny fraction of the overall gaming market. If you're a developer deciding where to spend your budget, supporting SteamOS is kinda hard to justify when the overwhelming majority of your players are on Windows or PlayStation or Xbox. These aren't just evil companies trying to shut your Steam Deck down. I mean, they're making reasonable-ish business decisions. And while it doesn't make things less frustrating, I kinda get it, at least to a small degree. But here's the thing. We're not just talking about new games that are shipping without SteamOS support, we're talking about games that worked before that are getting broken by updates. Like, it's just not a good look. But what happens if you throw a whole lot of money at the problem? Well, let me introduce you to the Legion Go 2 running SteamOS. Now, the main selling point with this is really the extra performance. Now, obviously it has a nicer OLED and a few other things, but what makes this kind of unique is that this is one of the most powerful, officially supported devices that is capable of running SteamOS. So last year, they announced the Legion Go S SteamOS edition, and I did an entire video on it. It gives you pretty much all the same functionality of the Steam Deck, just with a bigger screen and slightly more performance. The problem, though, with the Legion Go S is that while it's a little bit more powerful than the Steam Deck, it's not by a huge amount. However, that is not a problem with this, the Legion Go 2. Technically, this is actually the Windows version of the Legion Go 2 that we have put SteamOS on ourselves. However, the hardware is completely identical. So when this goes on sale in June for a whopping 1,350 bucks, you should get this exact same experience. But my main question really isn't about the actual hardware, it's about, "Is the performance good enough to take up some of the slack that the Steam Deck has left behind?" A game like "Monster Hunter," theoretically, should run much, much better here. It does still show that the Steam Deck is not supported, but it does show that it is compatible with SteamOS. Now, of course, extra-performance is not going to help with games that have anti-cheat compatibility. But actually I will say that just this morning, as we're recording this video, I was reading an article that EA had put out a job listing to help bring the Javelin anti-cheat to not only Windows on Arm, but also to come up with a roadmap to support things such as SteamOS, which would be great. Depends on how long it's gonna take, though. And, wow, that's really bright. The screen is so good. Hang on, I gotta actually turn that down. Well, that's an encouraging sign. We're immediately locked to 60 FPS. Now, if you recall from three minutes ago, this looks real bad on the Steam Deck. But, that being said, this is better. So we're getting an actually fairly smooth 60 FPS. Now, that being said, the image quality doesn't look any better. We're running at a high resolution, but it's still upscaling from quite a low resolution. Now, if this is me, I'm probably turning up the settings a little bit, but we're instantly in a super playable kinda zone. It really does show that with more horsepower under the hood, SteamOS has a lot of functionality. Maybe we just get Steam Deck 2 and all our problems will be solved. (swallows) Please don't charge me $800 for it. So is the Steam Deck still worth it in 2026? I mean, in my opinion, SteamOS is still the absolutely best handheld operating system, period. The way games sleep and resume, the controller-friendly interface, lack of Windows drivers and update nonsense. I mean, as much progress as Microsoft has made with the Xbox Ally, they're still a ways away from what Valve have built here. Every time I use a Windows handheld, I come back to the sweet, warm embrace of the Steam Deck and breathe a happy sigh of relief. Ah, I'm home. Ow, that hurt. (object shatters) And to be fair, there are over 25,000 games that are verified or playable on Steam Deck. That is a massive library. And for a lot of games, whether they be ancient or stuff from the last few years, the Deck is still a fantastic experience. But, man, the cracks are getting real. It feels like games are really targeting the Xbox Series S and the Switch 2 as their minimum spec, and the Steam Deck just can't keep up. And with the anti-cheat situation, it means that a lot of the biggest games in the world are just straight up off limits. Here's the thing, though. If you're like me and you already own a Steam Deck, what are your choices? I mean, there isn't a super-clean upgrade beyond something like the much more expensive Legion Go 2? So if you had to buy something today, what should you actually get? Well, the Switch 2 at $450 does give you access to Nintendo's library, and some actually pretty impressed with third-party ports, but it's a very, very different ecosystem. Windows handhelds, like the Xbox Ally, is a little bit of a closer match, huge compatibility, but the software experience is still kinda rough. I mean, you are making a bet that they continue to clean things up. Now, if you can find a Steam Deck OLED in stock, and that is a very big if right now, it is a great device, for most people. If you're playing indie games, older titles, turn-based RPGs, I mean, anything that doesn't push the hardware too hard, honestly, it is still great. But if you're the person who wants to play the latest AAA games, not just today, but into the next couple of years, I kinda can't recommend the Deck, at least without mentioning some of the big asterisks that come with it at this point. The Steam Deck was a big deal when it launched. It proved that gaming on Linux could work. It forced Microsoft to take handheld seriously and it kick-started an entire category. SteamOS is genuinely one of my favorite things Valve has ever made, and I think it has a super bright future. But time (clock ticking), time waits for no one. And the Deck in 2026 is really starting to feel like it is waiting for a next generation. A next generation that doesn't have a release date, doesn't have a price, and probably won't show up until 2028, later? For now, I am still using my Steam Deck. But for the first time, I am actively thinking about what's next, and I think that says a lot. If you wanna know more about why the Steam machine has been delayed or the state of Xbox in 2026, you can check out those videos here. And if you enjoy it, make sure to subscribe to the channel, and ring-a-ling that ding-a-ling button. Until next time, my friends. I hope that GabeN shows up to my front door and tries to drop off a shiny new Steam Deck. Any day now, he'll be hiding in my bushes. (down-tempo electronic music)