The Steam Deck won’t have exclusive titles, says Valve

Valve has confirmed that their upcoming handheld PC, the Steam Deck, will not have any exclusive titles.

The announcement comes via an official FAQ for developers, in which the company shot down any notion of exclusive titles for the device.

According to Valve, having Steam Deck exclusives “doesn’t make much sense to us. It’s a PC and it should just play games like a PC.”

Valve also explained how to get your games verified on the platform – a process they first explained back in October, which separates games into three categories: Verified, Playable and Unsupported. Verified games are titles that Valve themselves have tested and confirmed to be working on the Steam Deck.

“The high level here is that your game will be reviewed by our testing team (either automatically, or you submit for review),” said Valve. “They’ll check for a bunch of Steam Deck compatibility items, like controller support, legibility, performance, and system support. After that your title will get a Deck Verified categorization, which will show up in the store on Steam Deck (as well as the library). All other titles will also be visible in the store regardless of Deck Verified category, just one tab over.”

The company also has plans to release SteamOS as a standalone, general-purpose operating system, though it wasn’t able to provide any further details about this, stating that:

“We definitely plan on releasing SteamOS as a separate operating system. We don’t have exact timing on that. We’re really focused on making sure that Steam Deck is a great experience, and we’ll release it for other hardware soon.”