Is Ghost of Tsushima Steam Deck compatible? In a strange turn of events, Ghost of Tsushima is great to play on Steam Deck but holds an Unsupported rating, however, a detailed breakdown has been provided to explain why.
Unsurprisingly, we consider the Steam Deck OLED to be the best handheld gaming PC that money can buy, but seeing the support from first-party PlayStation studios shows how important it is in the wider gaming industry. This open-world game from Sucker Punch is one of the best on the handheld, but can’t yet qualify for a Verified or even Playable rating.
Is Ghost of Tsushima Steam Deck compatible?
Ghosts of Tsushima is rated as Unsupported on Steam Deck, this is due to the Legends Co-Op online mode requiring a PlayStation online connection, which is currently only possible on Windows.
As explained in a post by Sucker Punch on the Steam community page, it’s not possible for Ghost of Tsushima to earn a Playable or Verified rating until every aspect of the game is accessible natively on the Linux handheld.
Outside of this issue, the game runs incredibly well with minor settings tweaks needed for near-perfect gameplay.
Best Ghost of Tsushima Steam Deck settings
- Motion Blur Strength: 50
- Field of View: 0
- Texture Quality: Low
- Texture Filtering: Trillinear
- Shadow Quality: Low
- Level of Detail: Low
- Terrain Detail: Low
- Volumetric Fog: Low
- Depth of Field: Low
- Screen Space Reflections: Off
- Screen Space Shadows: Low
- Ambient Occlusion: SSAO Quality
- Bloom: On
- Vignette: On
- Water Caustics: On
- VSync: On
- Upscale Method: AMD FSR 3.0
- Dynamic Resolution Scaling: 60
These settings earned me a very steady 50fps, rarely dropping even when in combat situations. It’s so impressive to see a game like this shrink down so easily onto the Steam Deck.
Ghost of Tsushima uses around 22w of battery power at all times, meaning a full charge on the Steam Deck OLED will get you around 2h 15m. The GPU usage is almost always maxed out and runs at 70 degrees while the CPU tends to sit at around 45-55% on usage, with a temperature of 65 degrees.
All in all, Ghost of Tsushima runs incredibly well on Steam Deck. Valve’s decision to mark it as Unsupported due to the Legends online connectivity issue, rather than Playable with a footnote, is extremely questionable.
If you’d rather play Ghost of Tsushima on a full rig but need to make some upgrades, we’ve got a comprehensive guide for how to build a gaming PC in 2024 that will take you through the process.