Members of the Steam Deck team revealed everything that is on track for the planned February launch in an interview with Valve on Thursday.
While the majority of the discussion focused on the Steam Deck hardware and Valve’s efforts to make the Steam Deck ready for other developers, Valve also revealed some of its game plans. On the Steam Deck, Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and the Half-Life series are all getting updates to make them better experiences.
Several Valve game development teams are working on the project, but the way the games are updated for the Steam Deck varies.
“The Dota [team] is doing something pretty innovative, at least within the context of Dota,” designer Greg Coomer says. “Just this past week, they shipped a new mode that allows players to play the game well using thumbsticks.” The update also included the return of a 4-player co-op mode that seems well-suited to the control scheme.
Designer Lawrence Yang elaborates: “They call it experimental controller support because they’re still looking for feedback, but you can play a real game of Dota with the gamepad now.” Fans of the Steam Controller have likely been using gyro aiming in CS: GO for years, but the Steam Deck update will improve the fit and quality of the controller support in CS: GO. It’s an upgrade of items like the radial menus that haven’t been modified in a long time, according to Coomer. He stated, “The team is delivering that renewed gloss and design intention.”
Valve is adding a “bunch” of adjustments to Half-Life, according to Coomer, though it sounds like it’ll be more about navigating menus and such than managing Gordon Freeman. “Even if the main Half-Life experience is pretty refined using a controller,” he noted, “a lot of things around the experience tend to either get left out or not be brought to the same degree of polish over time.” All of the Half-Life games should be receiving updates, albeit not all of them will be released at the same time.
Yang also mentioned that the Portal games have already been validated on Steam Deck and perform well on the portable, but that Left 4 Dead 2 may also receive some attention. “I believe we should look through the entire Valve inventory to ensure that everything on Deck is in good working order,” he said.
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