this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2026
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Steam Hardware

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[Discussion] What games are you playing on your Steam Deck/Machine/Frame? - October 2026 (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 1 week ago by Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
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[–] dmir@gehirneimer.de 2 points 5 hours ago

Steam Deck here:

  • No Man's Sky. The new update is great, and the expedition is just moving. Hard to believe it's been 10 years since the game release. So much has happened since, and now I can enjoy the universe, in the palms of my hands. I've tried playing at the lower settings at 30 FPS for better battery life and less noise, and it's actually pretty decent and more relaxing that way.
  • ARC Raiders. Again, 30 FPS. 40 FPS is definitely doable here, but I think the visual fidelity can degrade so far this way that it can be too difficult to roam the more open areas and properly respond to threats: you may simply not see them because of the lower resolution you'll have to run it at to keep that 40 FPS stable. And the new update is amazing, too.
  • THE FINALS. I will probably wait until 2026-10-20 with this one, when Season 12 arrives. Used to play it with gyro, but the AI that Embark Studios has been using to look for cheating behavior signals has been issuing bans to such players. so I'd rather cut down on competitiveness and not risk an account suspension for months (if that).
  • Allumeria. Great mix of Terraria and Minecraft, one I'd been waiting for for years. Can't stop building!
  • Ballionaire. Like Balatro, but with pachinko machines and different boards that add their quirks. Really fun in its style, too!
  • Pumpkin Jack. It is Spooktober after all! Started it last year, planning to beat it now if I don't get carried away by No Man's Sky and "ARC Raiders* and THE FINALS again (so probably not beating it this year either).
  • DERELIKT demo. The game's supposed to be out this year, but I just want to experience them retro System Shock + Doom 3 vibes already, 'tis the season. I really enjoy the visual identity of Hypestrange games.
[–] blimthepixie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago

Alias

Through a PS2 emulator

[–] Flamekebab@piefed.social 3 points 4 days ago

I've been vaguely replaying Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge. Pretty cosy, if a bit crashy. Also the performance is comparable to when I played it back on my 400 MHz Pentium II. I've never understood why it runs so poorly under Wine or virtualization.

[–] radiouser@crazypeople.online 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Arc Raiders! It runs like shit but it runs lol.

[–] dmir@gehirneimer.de 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

On the Steam Deck? I had actually expected much worse from an UE5 title.

That said, we ain't bringing down no Rocketeers or Vaporizers on them Decks.

[–] radiouser@crazypeople.online 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Ah, it's only the Queen/Harvesters and Matriarch maps I avoid as the Deck really starts chugging on those matches. It's a bit annoying since they're endgame content (I've been playing pretty much since release and still haven't crafted a single legendary weapon, lol) but after tinkering with the settings, I can usually lock in a pretty stable 35 FPS otherwise.

Best of luck out there, Raider!

[–] dmir@gehirneimer.de 1 points 6 hours ago

What's your model? I got an older LCD one. I can kind of get it to run 40 FPS pretty much all the time, but it gets noisy and hot that way, which I really don't like and try to avoid, especially in something like ARC Raiders, because it's a type of game I go in for a couple of hours, maybe "wired" to the socket.

I've tried playing the Frozen Trail update at 30 FPS yesterday with these settings:

  • In-game:
    • Resolution: Borderless fullscreen at 1280x800, but 50% render scale (so 640x400)
    • No AA at all
    • All graphics to Low
  • SteamOS:
    • 30 FPS, 60 Hz
    • Allow screen tearing: On - to hopefully get less input, which is especially important on FPS this low
    • Half-rate shading: Off
    • TDP: 12 (at most)
    • Manual GPU clock: 700 MHz - to stop the hiccups when it either spikes or drops down

Surprisingly playable. Although I am mostly used to playing shooters with gyro on the Steam Deck and have difficulty using it as a standard controller in such games. Playing gyro in an Embark game is not an option right now, as they've been increasingly more reliant on AI for behavioural analysis, which has issued many bans to THE FINALS players that were only admitted and reversed somewhat recently, with some of them being issues again weeks after - ARC Raiders has recently introduced the same system, so I'm taking my chances. What I especially like about these settings is that the device runs much quieter and cooler, which gives me a little peace of mind, helping me think I won't have to replace it or at least do some costly maintenance that soon.

The new controller scheme they have is also messing with my muscle memory in the most important of moments. lol

But I really hope that practice can make perfect here as well. I've gotten somewhat okay at this game with a wired 8BitDo Ultimate (the XBOX layout one), but I guess I just hold my Steam Deck differently. Maybe it's time to make better use of the back pedals.

As for the end-game content, yeah, I feel you. Gonna be even more difficult now. I'm not spoiling this to you if you want to read the patch notes yourself.

[–] pgs@aussie.zone 4 points 6 days ago

Mostly Brotato

[–] P1nkman@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

Doki Doki Literature Club Plus!

It's such a good dating sim.

[–] jwiggler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Finishing up onimusha on my steamdeck. Well ... Streaming from my PC to my steamdeck so I can hang with the gf around the house. Forza horizon 6 has been fun too

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I was pretty happy with how it ran on the Deck itself, but I bet it would look pretty running on a full PC. Did you have any issues with latency making parries/etc hard?

[–] jwiggler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Nope. I'm on the final boss and accidentally am super under levelled (level 2 on all my upgradables) so I'm pretty much issen-ing everything, and going from computer to steamdeck hasn't been an issue

Edit: I beat it today. Final boss probably took me like 50 tries lmao. Fun game.

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

I’ve been playing a lot of Arknights Endfield on Deck. I had to waver between installing via Heroic / Epicstore, and Twintail Launcher due to validation issues. Might be nicer if it was in Steam, but I’m happy I have it working.

[–] bashibazouk@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fucking Noita. I have a ton of games on the deck but my fingers seem only able to launch Noita. I need a 12 step program...

[–] async_amuro@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago

Oh man, I feel this comment. Bought it ages ago, never booted it up. Past weekend I had some downtime and figured I’d give it a go… 6 hours of playtime later… just want to keep playing it, classic “one more run” type of game!

[–] nfreak@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Fuck's Quest II

completely unironically it's actually so fucking good. it's stupid as shit but is smart about it, gameplay is incredibly solid, and the soundtrack is somehow legitimately really well done. this game has no right being as good as it is but here we are

my only actual nitpick is that there are 2 "puzzles" that are so absurd that the best way to beat them (especially the harder one) is to lock your frame rate down to like 10. but tbh that's also entirely on-brand with the rest of the game. funny enough the game calls you out for cheating in an achievement for clearing the second one at all - and it's also required for 100%

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Lately I've been playing Trails in the Sky 2nd chapter. I had never played the trails series before 1st chapter's remake last year, and they're pretty fantastic, highly recommended for JRPG fans.

I also played Onimusha: Way of the Sword. Really fun, and had a good time with it. My only real complaint is that the difficulty scaling felt kinda off, especially at the beginning everything was far too easy, and then the difficulty ramps up kinda unevenly. Still really fun though, all the boss fights especially were great.

[–] Subscript5676@piefed.ca 4 points 1 week ago

As someone who played the original version of Trails in the Sky, I thought they really did a great job with the 3D remake, and I think it's a great way to get people into the series. So it makes me happy to see that people are enjoying it.

[–] M137@lemmy.today 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

But what about us "only have Steam Controller" people? :(
We wanna be in the club and asked too.

[–] Noblesavage@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I asked the other club members and we took a vote. They said if have a Steam Controller and you're still using it - you can be an associate member only. That basically limits you to two Half-Life 3 jokes a day and posting about how "my wallet hurts" or similar to 4 times a year. Otherwise - welcome to the club!

[–] M137@lemmy.today 3 points 5 days ago

Hahah, superb answer! I will follow the rules to a T.

[–] fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Asking

[–] M137@lemmy.today 1 points 5 days ago

The two games I played when I got it happened to have the exact same hotbar wheel control, which is holding left bumper for a circular menu and using the right thumbstick to choose and then release LB. I made the left touchpad do that without having to use LB, works so well! The games in question are Runescape Dragonwilds and Dune Awakening.
I'm surprised by how much I enjoy the controller as a normal controller, just using the normal buttons that xbox controllers have, that I've been lazy about really configuring it and using the extra inputs. There's a bigger reason for that but I'm not sober enough to write that whole thing ATM, I'll add it tomorrow. Do you have one too? If so, what's your experience?

[–] SatyrSack@quokk.au 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Mainly Beat Saber. I tried out a couple flat rougelikes (I think Brotato and Deep Rock Galactic Survivor), and they worked fine.

I also tried PolyCube, but it did not work in VR mode. It would launch and I could see my controllers, but pressing buttons did nothing. I could not even navigate the in-game menu to start playing a session. Perhaps if I connected a standard Xbox controller or something, that would work. I know that a standard controller is recommended for that game, and from my own experience years back with older generation VR controllers that lacked traditional face buttons, that surely was preferable. But I was expecting that the Frame controllers would suffice. Unfortunately, this game was abandoned by its developer, so I doubt it will ever be patched to make the Frame controllers work properly. Perhaps an update to the Frame itself will fix whatever the issue is (EDIT: I have seen similar complaints about other VR games being unresponsive to controls, so I am optimistic that an update to the Steam Frame or SteamVR will fix this). Everything works fine if you launch the game not in VR mode, though. The VR controllers work just as well as an Xbox controller or something thanks to the fact that they actually have face buttons unlike most VR controllers when the game was originally made.

Lastly, I keep trying to figure out how to make the mouse pointer appear. It seems like Valve disabled it because they want to just use the laser pointer thing that appears when you point your VR controller. But that means that when you connect a literal mouse to use in desktop mode, you can't tell where you're pointing. I am sure there is some way to revert whatever Valve had disabled, but I am not finding anything relevant in the KDE settings.

All of this is standalone. I have not tried streaming.

[–] Cricket@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Apparently the mouse pointer issue requires a bit of hacking and there's no setting in the GUI to do it: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamFrame/comments/1wp3el3/invisible_mouse_cursor_in_desktop_mode_kde_wayland/

[–] SatyrSack@quokk.au 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Thanks! This seems like something that Valve had intentionally disabled, so once they become aware that some people actually want it, I assume they will add an easy setting to re-enable it.

But in the mean time, so people don't have to visit Reddit, here is the relevant bit from that post:

The Actual Fix via Konsole:

Once you know the mouse is paired correctly, and see that it works (just the pointer is not visible) open Konsole and run this single command to force KWin to render the pointer icon over the Gamescope layer:

mkdir -p ~/.config/environment.d && echo "KWIN_FORCE_SW_CURSOR=1" >> ~/.config/environment.d/kwin_cursor.conf

Make sure to restart Desktop Mode (or reboot the headset) after running this for the changes to take effect.

[–] Cricket@lemmy.zip 1 points 5 days ago

No problem! Thanks for extracting the relevant bit to avoid visiting Reddit.

[–] waxy@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Control! Resisting the urge to buy Resonant by playing the original. It's really awesome still and it's much nicer on the Steam Machine than my old Xbox.

[–] Davel23@fedia.io 4 points 1 week ago

I've been playing Resonant (not on the Deck) and I have to say I prefer Control. Resonant isn't bad, the mechanics are fun but it's not a great sequel to Control. It just doesn't have the same feel Control does.

[–] G0ldenSp00n@lemmy.jacaranda.club 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

On the Machine I have been playing couch co-op Minecraft Dungeons II (streamed from my windows machine since it doesn't currently support Linux). On the Frame I have finally been playing through Chants of Sennaar, I was also playing through Minecraft Dungeons I on the Frame (which isn't technically Frame verified but I was able to get like 30 FPS at 1080p on that game).

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I believe they released a patch today to add Linux support to Minecraft Dungeons 2.

[–] G0ldenSp00n@lemmy.jacaranda.club 2 points 4 days ago

They did, it runs wonderfully on the Steam Machine natively now.

[–] DrCake@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Been playing Stardew Valley on my PC but seen that Fields of Mistria is quite high in the steam deck charts so will try and give that a go

[–] morbidcactus@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Morrowind for me, Just Good Morrowind runs pretty well on the deck, openmw does support controller pretty well (similar to the Xbox morrowind if anyone else rembers playing that), but I use a community config that works really well.

Restarted my last run because there were a bunch of mod changes between then and now. Found my oblivion disks cleaning up this year so super tempted to get that going as well, would like some qol mods though.

Anyone have recommendations for Skyrim on the deck? Found it chugs a bit with the default settings.

[–] GottaHaveFaith@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I always check on proton dB

https://www.protondb.com/app/489830

I should definitely try morrowind, but my backlog is already huge

[–] morbidcactus@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Thanks!

If you do get around to it, would totally recommend going through openmw and something like the I heart vanilla modpack if you really want the vanilla experience. It definitely shows its age but has its charm, world is interesting and there's almost and overwhelming amount of tools to work with.

[–] kossa@feddit.org 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Started Dishonored 2 on Deck. It flows better than 1, maybe because I know what to expect and how the game plays. Kind of dived into 1 with the expectation of playing it like a FPS. Waiting for my Frame, am on the reservation queue since the lottery. Having daydreams of playing the game in VR, that would be so cool, seems like a perfect VR game. Theoratically, there could be a way, but Linux support and especially Frame support doesn't seem to be there yet. But as long as I can't buy the Frame I keep daydreaming anyways.

[–] dmir@gehirneimer.de 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I couldn't get far in Dishonored 2 on my Steam deck: text was too small and jagged, both in menus and in-game trivia, like books, letters, etc. Otherwise a great title, yeah, with much smoother combat than the first game - not that the first game's combat is bad, though!

[–] kossa@feddit.org 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Have you tried the Deck lense? I can read the text just fine, but before starting, I got a popup, that there's a button combo to use a lense, to better read stuff.

[–] dmir@gehirneimer.de 1 points 3 days ago

Oh right!

I actually use it all the time in Starminer: have it bound on left trackpad touch, and the trackpad itself be a whole screen mouse region. I guess a game like Dishonored 2 just doesn't lend itself to the lense every now and then, so I didn't even think about it.

I also have the left trackpad dedicated to movement in Dishonored 2, but now that I think of it, maybe layers or chords will do the trick.

Thanks for the reminder! Maybe I'll actually do my second playthrough on the Steam Deck!

[–] tiberius@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago

Treasure Hunter Claire... It was on sale...

[–] mortalic@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Dave the diver, fm26, clair obscure e33, rimworld

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 points 1 week ago

Downloaded the Witcher 3 last night after the free dlc remaster news. For some reason it had to update the entire install again today. I've had it for a little while but never put much time in it. I'm dedicating myself to getting through it this time.

[–] GottaHaveFaith@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

I always play peglin to relax. I used to play a lot of hero's hour but I kinda got tired, luckily hh 2 is coming out. I'm also playing a lot of idle/incremental games. An cyberpunk 2077 for the third time, but on a linux desktop

[–] CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.today 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)
  • Oblivion Remastered (Linux PC, Machine)
  • Hades 2 (Linux PC, Machine, Deck)
  • Vampire Survivors (Machine, Deck)
  • Overwatch (Linux PC, Machine)
  • Marvel Rivals (Linux PC)

Still waitlisted on Frame, can't wait to get back into VR with it. I've contemplated setting up my old Vive in the meantime and seeing if it works on the Steam Machine.

[–] CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.today 1 points 1 week ago

I just set up my HTC Vive with the Steam Machine (doesn't work on SteamOS unfortunately even in desktop mode, but it works in Arch Linux/KDE Plasma) and was in Skyrim VR and I got my Steam Frame 1TB reservation email! There's a bunch of VR games on sale and I didn't want to wait for the Frame to play them.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago

Can't say I have come across anything particularly exciting since cyberpunk, eldenring, baldurs gate. then again my gaming budget is basically zero right now.