Ghost of Tsushima runs incredibly well on the Steam Deck, but to my surprise, Valve has rated it as Unsupported. The game’s handheld performance is arguably the best of any PS5 port so far, so why would Valve not give it, at the very least, a Playable rating? Well, there’s one small issue preventing the game from getting a better rating, and I can’t help but feel like Valve is making a huge mistake with how it is handling this situation.
I’ve tested Ghost of Tsushima on the Steam Deck OLED and the performance is fantastic. You can see exactly what settings I’m using in our Steam Deck compatibility guide. Valve’s decision to slap the game with an Unsupported rating, then, is down to one game mode not working because it needs to access PlayStation network features, which right now is only possible on Windows devices.
When you check out the Ghost of Tsushima store page on Steam, the Unsupported rating is clear, although a footnote for “developer comments” is also featured. By following this, you are taken to the community post from Sucker Punch talking about Steam Deck compatibility.
It’s only here that the specific reason for the Unsupported rating is given. “You may notice that Steam marks the game as ‘Unsupported’ for Steam Deck. This is due to the Legends co-op multiplayer mode requiring Windows to access PlayStation Network integrated features.”
Legends is an online co-op multiplayer mode that sees you team up with other players around the world to tackle missions in a supernatural setting.
This mode is available as a separate game on PS5 but is now included as part of the Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut package. It has no impact on the main game or its expansion, yet is being treated as though a large part of the game is now inaccessible.
While the Steam Deck is now struggling to natively run some big triple-A games without specific optimizations, Ghost of Tsushima runs at a smooth 50 fps which is perfectly fine for a single-player game. However, a tertiary game mode, one which many players may never even bother to explore, is holding the game back.
It’s worth remembering that with millions of Steam Decks in the market, many owners will take Valve’s word as fact. If a game is Unsupported, they won’t seek out performance mods, they won’t dual boot operating systems to get around anti-cheats, and their interest in a game lives and dies by the Valve-assigned rating.
This means players will not bother with Ghost of Tsushima thanks to this rating that is a misrepresentation of how the game actually plays. As a result, they miss out on a fantastic game that epitomizes just how great the Steam Deck can be when it comes to portable gaming.
I’ve addressed some of the confusing implementations of Valve’s Steam Deck rating system before, such as with Horizon Forbidden West performing great on Steam Deck once you tweak some settings, yet Valve again assigned an unjust Unsupported rating.
There are also plenty of games that have little to no controller support, leading to awkward or outright unusable controls meaning an external mouse and keyboard are needed, yet these games are still eligible for Playable ratings.
Of the over 14,000 Playable or Verified games, there are bound to be some exceptions to Valve’s general rule, but with high-profile games like Ghost of Tsushima, these inconsistencies are brought to the forefront, and it’s not a great look for anyone.
It won’t be the last time that Valve’s rating system makes headlines, but my only hope is that changes are on the way and will be in place by the time the Steam Deck 2 releases.
If you want to know what we consider the best Steam Deck games to be, then check out our list where every game is hand-picked and tested.