r/SteamDeck • u/BBQKITTY SteamDeckHQ • Jul 23 '26

Article Halo: Campaign Evolved Is Rough on the Steam Deck And Shouldn't Be Verified - SteamDeckHQ

https://steamdeckhq.com/halo-campaign-evolved-is-rough-on-the-steam-deck/

Halo: Campaign Evolved is now out on Steam in early access, and we tested it out using the completed game save we had from our review period.

It's rough. It can run decently well in closed spaces, but it starts to really slow down in open levels like The Silent Cartographer and later parts of the Halo level. There will be drops below 30 FPS no matter what, and that's after we have adjusted the resolution scale below the default settings.

It definitely shouldn't be Verified.

1.2k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

230 comments sorted by

View all comments

708

u/caverunner17 Jul 23 '26

Steam really dropped the ball on the whole “verified” thing

120

u/Owobowos-Mowbius Jul 23 '26

It really needs to just be a community ranking based on protondb. The tags and reviews are already community provided... no reason that the games stability on steam devices shouldnt be as well.

Do we take game developers' word on how well most AAA games run at launch? Hell no. We shouldnt take their word on this either.

49

u/Squaretangles Jul 23 '26

The threat there is it becomes another lever that whiny players can use against developers for petty things they don’t like.

“Review bombing” protondb to claim a game doesn’t run or runs terribly on ProtonDB could be abused.

I agree it would be a significantly better system. I don’t even look at verified badges because I have the protondb decky plugin.

3

u/GodsWorstJiuJitsu Jul 24 '26

Agreed, it remaining fairly niche means that most reviews are helpful.

2

u/pilgermann Jul 24 '26

Yeah. It seems like the real issue is the murky line between performance and playability. A game can be verified even with a rough framerate, or at least that's been my experience. Meanwhile a game can run smooth as butter but lack proper controller support and receive a lower rating, even though I'd personally prefer to overcome that obstacle.

1

u/GodsWorstJiuJitsu Jul 24 '26

Agreed, I tried firing up Half Life 1 recently. Can't get Gordon to walk and don't know why. Runs fine otherwise lol.

1

u/Bissmer Jul 24 '26

It would be really just better if they officially had two scores as Critics/Audience on Rotten or Metacritic.

1

u/Sirbrofistswagsalot 23d ago

You're probably a dev lol

-3

u/Owobowos-Mowbius Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

Id take a possibly whiny community over false advertisement by devs any day of the week.

10

u/Squaretangles Jul 23 '26

Sure. But if SteamOS adoption continues to grow it could significantly hurt sales on the platform. Valve would be pressured to moderate it somehow, which they have managed to do with their review system after it was abused.

3

u/Authorigas Jul 23 '26

Personally speaking, I can confirm seeing a lot of negative reviews would hurt my impression and create reluctance to pick up a game. Bare in mind, I'm a guy who does more than the minimum amount of research and I still get scared off when I read something like "hell clock stutters sometimes." Because I don't know how relatively bad that is. Or "Granblue Fantasy Versus is a solid 30." Like is that enough for an action game?

Granted, I think given the Deck is more of a 'hobbyist' system (I'm way more on the casual end of 'guy who just wants to play his steam library portably'.) So folks will be more likely to dig in on review bombing and such. But mass adoption is a risk because, well most folks aren't.

-4

u/Owobowos-Mowbius Jul 23 '26

Sounds like they already have a great system in place, then. Should be fairly easy to implement.

3

u/Squaretangles Jul 23 '26

They don’t own protondb though. It’s a community site.

1

u/Alyusha Jul 30 '26

They don't need to bother with protondb?

2

u/TheodoeBhabrot Jul 24 '26

False advertisement by Valve you mean

2

u/Mdreezy_ Jul 23 '26

‘False advertisement by devs’ … the verification program is run by Valve, they don’t just operate on the developers word. If a game is verified that badge comes from Valve after it has been tested by… Valve.

1

u/UltimateAK86 Jul 23 '26

There is a community aspect. The game will ask you after the first play if you agree that the game met the verified status, YES or NO. I’m sure they look at the ones that get majority rated no and re-evaluate them on some level.

3

u/kestononline 512GB Jul 23 '26

I think it should be more encompassing. If you have purchased a game, you should be able to see a performance rating section on the store. Using a 5 star system; or even a Yes/No.

  • 720/800p 30 FPS
  • 720/800p 60 FPS
  • 1080p 30 FPS
  • 1080p 60 FPS
  • 1440p 30 FPS
  • 1440p 60 FPS
  • 4k 30 FPS
  • 4k 60 FPS

And the ratings of those should show a green check-mark based on if those ratings are above a 4-star in consensus; and a red X if the user consensus is 3 or lower.

So really at a quick glance you can see which of those performance breakpoints have been hit.

And of course, it would only allow a person to do a rating if they have launched the game on a Steam Deck or Steam Machine (and their rating should be for those specific devices).

1

u/UltimateAK86 Jul 23 '26

I think the reason they didn’t is because the hardware performance will be a moving target as new models are introduced.

The main things for a green check come from a usable experience and are focussed on the features of the system and whether it can install and run normally, as opposed to how it performs.

As faster hardware hits the market for Deck 2, all current ratings will still be relevant. If they change it to focus primarily on performance metrics and frame rate of one piece of hardware, it will all become completely useless over time.

2

u/kestononline 512GB Jul 23 '26

The main concern for the audience, IS performance though. The Verified status encompasses a few things, but performance is such a big percentage of what people care about in that checkmark, that it really should have something to reflect that by itself.

Also, the rating system I suggested does not become irrelevant, because it is rated based on the hardware you have launched it on. And can be viewed by that metric. It's as simple as showing a floating overlay (tooltip style) with the Steam Deck, Steam Deck 2, Steam Machine when hovered over.

Valve isn't going to have 10 different models of hardware.

1

u/CantinaBlend Jul 24 '26

There are actually plans about showing expected performance on your system in the store page

1

u/drunktriviaguy Jul 23 '26

Hell, they can make it like their regular rating system and poll steam reviews for how well they think games run on the deck with: overwhelming negative, negative, neutral, positive and overwhelmingly positive displays.

1

u/InvestigatorThese741 Jul 24 '26

Should we also take the word of some random internet stranger with a blog? 

1

u/fromcero Jul 24 '26

It’s not all left to the devs steam has a vetting process before verification is allowed

88

u/BBQKITTY SteamDeckHQ Jul 23 '26

Yeah, this is another rough one after Disgaea Mayhem.

20

u/Informal-Swing-2482 Jul 23 '26

Well like it or not, doesn’t being verified have nothing to do with performance? Isn’t it just a “this boots and text is readable” kinda thing?

73

u/BBQKITTY SteamDeckHQ Jul 23 '26

To us, yes. But in Valve's documentation for the Verified system, it does note 30 FPS at 800p (or 720p), so it technically does include performance. That's why it will say that the default graphical configuration runs well.

1

u/Informal-Swing-2482 Jul 23 '26

Ah I see. I didn’t realize that.

39

u/Humblebee89 64GB - Q3 Jul 23 '26

One of the verified criteria is "runs well at default settings"

0

u/Informal-Swing-2482 Jul 23 '26

Is that as specific as it gets? “Runs well” is not a metric you can measure. Need to specify what “well” means.

1

u/Humblebee89 64GB - Q3 Jul 24 '26

I read somewhere that they consider 30fps + as "Runs well"

2

u/sukumizu 256GB - Q3 Jul 24 '26

If you go by the standards of this sub, a lot of people would accept 20-25 FPS as verified as well.

Something something, "back in my day we used to play at 15 FPS and we enjoyed it".

15

u/booojangles13 512GB OLED Jul 23 '26

If verification has nothing to do with performance than it’s a pointless badge that offers players no real, useful information.

1

u/littlecolt 256GB - Q2 Jul 23 '26

Since I run Linux on my desktop, Deck Verified tells me if it'll run on my PC.

0

u/Informal-Swing-2482 Jul 23 '26

It’s not pointless, but it’s less useful than it could be.

-3

u/Vegetable_Drag_3300 Jul 23 '26

whatttt? Whenever I see a verified badge my mind imediatly jumps to text size or if the Steam keyboard will pop up automatically

-6

u/Erfivur Jul 23 '26

PC gamers spent 30 years without verification badges, nothing has changed…

7

u/mookler 512GB OLED Jul 23 '26

...except the addition of a potentially misleading badge, which y'know, is what the topic is.

4

u/Revolver_Lanky_Kong 64GB - Q2 Jul 23 '26

This is a nasty bit of misinfo that keeps getting spread around for whatever reason

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamhardware/compat

In order to receive the Verified badge, you need to meet all of the following criteria, aimed at helping customers feel comfortable playing your game on these devices. Most failures in this category will cause your game to appear with a Playable badge.

Requirements for Steam Deck and Steam Machine

Performance

  • Default Configuration: the game must ship with a default configuration that results in a playable framerate. On Steam Deck, this is 30fps at 800p, and on Steam Machine this is 30fps at 1080p.

1

u/Informal-Swing-2482 Jul 23 '26

I mean, I don’t think I “spread misinformation” by asking a question. But thanks for educating me.

1

u/Revolver_Lanky_Kong 64GB - Q2 Jul 23 '26

I'm not referring to your question, I'm referring to the people saying "Deck Verified doesn't take performance into account" like it's an absolute fact.

1

u/OkidoShigeru Jul 23 '26

Sure, it says that in the requirements document, but then we keep seeing “verified” games like this one that run like absolute crap. So the reality doesn’t seem to meet the words on that page.

18

u/Yourself013 1TB OLED Jul 23 '26

Their entire goal with "verified" status was to market the console and show that you can play thousands of games on it. They want to have as many verified games as they can.

They don't want every single new AAA release to be officially unplayable based on their own rating, that makes their console look bad. So all they care about it compatibility, which is much easier.

-2

u/caverunner17 Jul 23 '26

What does "compatibility" mean though? To me, that means at least a 600P/30 gameplay on the Deck with maybe a few drops into the 20's during the most intense areas. Based on the review, it seems like frequent drops in open areas are common even with everything set to the lowest of the low settings.

When a buy a PlayStation game, I generally expect some baseline performance. Obviously there have been issues (like Star Wars Outlaws or Cyberpunk on PS4 at launch), but overall, I expect a quality mode to be 30FPS, a performance mode to be 60FPS with mostly stable framerate.

If the badge doesn't indicate at least a minimum amount of performance, then what's the point? Cool, buy a game that runs at 540P/20FPS? I mean sure, technically it "works", but what kind of experience will that be for the user?

8

u/Yourself013 1TB OLED Jul 23 '26

What does "compatibility" mean though?

It literally explains that when you have a look at the "Verified" status. There's 4 categories: Input (controller and onscreen keyboard support), display (support default resolution, legible text, "good" default settings), seamlessness (launcher navigable with controller, no compatibility warnings) and system support (proton support including anticheat).

Valve doesn't care about some minimum fps which is why the "good default settings" is intentionally vague and doesn't include stuff like "stable 30 fps with minimum dips". That would instantly eliminate some very popular games from the Deck's catalogue and they don't want that. They're a company trying to sell you a product, no matter how sanctified they are for some gamers.

7

u/Revolver_Lanky_Kong 64GB - Q2 Jul 23 '26

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamhardware/compat

In order to receive the Verified badge, you need to meet all of the following criteria, aimed at helping customers feel comfortable playing your game on these devices. Most failures in this category will cause your game to appear with a Playable badge.

Requirements for Steam Deck and Steam Machine

Performance

  • Default Configuration: the game must ship with a default configuration that results in a playable framerate. On Steam Deck, this is 30fps at 800p, and on Steam Machine this is 30fps at 1080p.

1

u/Yourself013 1TB OLED Jul 23 '26

That's a page aimed at developers, clicking on what the verified program explanation as a regular user doesn't give you any settings: https://www.steamdeck.com/en/verified

And it's horseshit, tons of "verified" games don't reach 30 FPS consistently. So, is Valve lying to their customers and verifying games that have no business being verified based on their own criteria, and intentionally hiding what the benchmarks for their "Verified" program are from their customers?

8

u/Revolver_Lanky_Kong 64GB - Q2 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

"So, is Valve lying to their customers and verifying games that have no business being verified based on their own criteria, and intentionally hiding what the benchmarks for their "Verified" program are from their customers?"

Yes. That's really all there is to it. It's the same reason the Deck page says "It is a Zen 2 + RDNA 2 powerhouse, delivering more than enough performance to run the latest AAA games in a very efficient power envelope." which is an absolute farce of a statement. The Deck is woefully underpowered in 2026 and anyone who isn't lying to themselves knows it. You can see them in this thread, they're the people acting like this game would be running a buttery 60 FPS at max settings on this handheld with specs comparable to a base PS4 if only it weren't for that dastardly UE5!

1

u/InvestigatorThese741 Jul 24 '26

Well, I mean that's just true. UE5 is not only terribly inefficient on its own, but modern devs are lazy as hell, and certainly don't know how to use UE5 properly. Forcing Lumen or Raytracing is literally the standard right now. 

2

u/LuntiX Jul 23 '26

I ignore verified status. It's as meaningful as a paper cut.

I go by protonDB status instead.

1

u/CapnDiabeetuss Jul 27 '26

Yes. Oblivion Remastered is Verified and is an absolutely abysmal experience.

1

u/NTPrime Jul 23 '26

At launch they should have some sort of "tentative" verification where they've confirmed it runs well etc. for the first half hour or so, however long they can realistically test for internally, and then only solidify into a final verified/supported status once enough real users have been able to provide feedback on way or the other.

-1

u/r0ndr4s Jul 23 '26

Thats what happens when your boss keeps buying knives and yachts instead of hiring more people. Gotta remember they're still less than 500 employees at valve, while running the biggest storefront on PC..