Top 20 games played on Steam Deck in the past month, sorted by playtime.

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Top 20 games played on Steam Deck in the past month, sorted by playtime.

#SteamDeck #steam

@steamdeck

169

Worth noting that Steam doesn't track playtime for non-Steam games. So this doesn't include Minecraft, Retroarch, or anything purchased through Itch, GOG, or Epic.

No doubt Fortnite would be somewhere on this list. Minecraft too. Not sure what else would be a guarantee.

Fortnite can’t be played unless you’re running windows

Ah that's a good point. I main Windows myself on Deck, due to Game Pass, so I forget about that side of things.

Edit: The amount of downvotes I got just for mentioning using Windows on Deck...

I main Windows

🤮🤮🤮🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮

The guy just shared how they use a device they bought with their money. You don't need to gatekeep. Or whatever this is.

It's not gatekeeping, it's just an opinion (his and mine). If anything, the gate is open on linux and closed on windows.

Do you think any of such games would be in the list?

I'd imagine only a smaller subset of people even set up their Steam Deck for third party games.

I dunno, I feel like the Steam Deck's core audience is "people who liked the Switch's form factor but also like mods and third-party launchers."

I think that's what we see and may be misattributing of a small active subset that is very technical and invested.

It's on the steam store. I'm sure many people buy and play, and don't ever read or write on a community like this. They're "invisible" here, but impact if not dominate the playtime ranking.

@Kissaki @klay how do I run mods that are originally for pc?

  • under Home -> Power, select "Desktop Mode."
  • Open Steam in desktop mode, and go to your Library.
  • Select a game, and go to Properties -> Local Files.
  • a file browser should open and show the game files just like you'd see on PC.

Emulation Station might, since a lot of people use it as a frontend for their emulators. Since ES runs in a separate window while you play, all the time spent playing emulated games would all add to ES's total.

I plan to add the GOG version of Cyberpunk once I get an SSD.

The fact the SteamDeck can play all of these at decent graphics and FPS in their full fat PC version still blows my mind

I honestly reach for it more than my Xbox or switch. it's easy to pick up and put down. easy to charge. and stuff runs fine on it.

It's not for everybody, but I love my deck.

I was skeptical at first and I finally gave in two weeks ago and it arrived last week.

I love my Steam Deck, this seems dumb but I actually use it to stream my ps5 and more intensive PC games. It easier to move around and pick up and put down. I've started to play games I bought years ago. Finished Limbo and Inside and playing Bioshock Remastered.

that's not dumb at all, it's a great use for it! I had planned to make mine strictly an emulation device (which it's amazing for) until I realized how well it handled bigger titles. not perfectly by any stretch, but mostly smooth and playable.

I had never played any of the fallout games and I've had a blast with new Vegas and fallout 4. I'd owned them for years but just never got around to it.

if only I could stop playing bg3 for long enough to get through some more of my backlog...

I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 on my Steam Deck since release, it's been such a great experience I can not recommend it enough, I never thought I would be able to play such a great game confortably from my bed on a "handheld" (?).

How far are you? I've played it on my laptop but I'm concerned how well it would run act 3

Just started 2nd act and I've spent like 55 hours in the game.

I'm the kind of person who can't sleep unless I open each and every crate, chest and vase there is.

That's why being able to easily pickup the SD and play for a while is a bliss for me.

Right?? A great experience on a game that literally just released and is HUUGE

Even a theoretical Switch Pro probably couldn't keep up 😂

Ehh... Starfield chugs on my Steam Deck to the point where the slowdowns make it practically unplayable. >.<

Very true, I should've thought more clearly about this specifics of some of these. Pretty sure it's literally only up there because either people are trying to fix it and this constantly launching it / having it open makes it #2.. or it's just up there because it's new and very popular

I know for a fact I dumped a good 2+ hours into it on my Deck trying to get it playable. XD

See? Hahaha, hopefully it'll be smooth as butter in future. Here's to hoping for ya

Yeah I wouldn't recommend Starfield on the Deck at this point. It's a bit too unstable to be enjoyable.

Please add text content for accessibility and discoverability to a post like this.

The image reads:

  • Baldur's Gate 3
  • Starfield
  • Cyberpunk 2077
  • ELDEN RING
  • ARMORED CORE™ VI FIRES OF RUBICON™
  • Stardew Valley
  • Sea of Stars
  • No Man's Sky
  • Vampire Survivors
  • Red Dead Redemption 2
  • Grand Theft Auto V
  • DAVE THE DIVER
  • The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
  • Hogwarts Legacy
  • Brotato
  • Slay the Spire
  • Fallout 4
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition
  • Hades
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Top 20 Steam Deck games of September 2023, by hours played

Thanks for that. Really hate images that are just data… :(

Don't hate me bro :)

No hate. Just disappointment at inaccessibility :) I can’t read the picture. But I can read the text. That’s why.

The post you replied to saying "don't hate me bro" has an image of Data from Star Trek TNG (you had said that you hate images that are only data)

:)

Isn't there a bot for that?

I see no such bot comment. Do you?

Not what i said. I mean it in an isnt there a bot that could do that task automatically . Like the summary bot.

Sounds like something that needs a bot. Transcribing every meme you want to post and source is just asinine lol.

Reviews of starfield on steamdeck: probably not the best experience maybe stick to more powerful devices

Average Steamdeck user: fuckin watch me, peasant.

I wonder if hours spent playing using Remote Play on the Deck counts towards the total.

While I prefer Sunrise/Moonlight, playing Starfield using streaming off your main gaming PC is a pretty good experience!

Moonlight is unreasonably capable. I initially dismissed it when I had shoddy performance between a wireless desktop and the steam deck. Then I set up tailscale and tried it outside the home during a lunch break, it was impossibly smooth. I thought maybe it was something to do with the fiber at my work. So I tried it at a friend's place in the next town over with the same ISP, impossibly smooth.

Now I'm in the process of overhauling my home network to figure out why it's better outside my home.

I've had the same experience with steam remote play, it works flawlessly outside my house, even off a hotspot from my phone! but in my house it's dog water, feels more like playing a slideshow built for the Gameboy advance

It's probably a result of wireless interference somewhere between the deck and the desktop. I also had a really bad experience with remote play and sunlight/moonlight before I hardwired my desktop to the router via an Ethernet cable. Just making that one part of the chain wired completely solved my issues.

Yeah OSI model says to check the connection between access point and deck. I remember back when I used the Steam Link to stream to my living room from my wireless desktop I would actually get better performance if the Steam Link was wireless point blank from the access point than if it was connected via Ethernet.

Hmm, because that makes me wonder if they also count it as a play for the host machine.

Also, how common is steamlink use? Would love to see how much it's utilised on the deck/steam in general. I tried it myself but unless your host is connected over Ethernet it's a bit on the slow side.

My thoughts exactly.

I absolutely love my Steam Deck. But playing even Cyberpunk on it made me run back to my PC.

I wonder how many steamdecks are owned by people who dont have another option for a gaming device that supports games like Cyberpunk and Starfield.

My lil bro is playing starfield on the steamdeck rn since he can't play it on his main PC tbf.

Yea that's might be it, it is the case for me at least. Cyberpunk 2.0 and BG runs quite okay for me on Steam deck, so I am not compelled to update my PC yet.

Of course on PC it would always be much better, but I am holding on to setup a home office in my apartment first and that might not happen soon.

Crazy that Binding of Isaac is still in there, it's been years since the last release and it's not really in the public consciousness the same way something like Vampire Survivors is. Fantastic game though, happy to see it continue to succeed

Probably because the new one is getting a lot of press and people go back to it

I wish it would go on sale… ever. I’ve bought it multiple times across several platforms now, I really don’t want to spend $60 trying to get all the DLC on PC

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Dave the Diver is such a gem

I played about 8 games in a row that I couldn't get into until I found this one. It is definitely enjoyable.

So proud of Skyrim, GTA-V and Fallout-4 holding strong decades after their release. They could be the most played games of the century

I think their age is also an advantage on the Deck. Since the requirements are lower they run better then new AAA games.

Wait starfield works on SD? I thought it was too slow. Has there been a new patch?

I actually went on vacation the day it released. I installed it on my deck to be able to play when at the hotel. I put 14 hours in starfield on my deck. It's PLAYABLE but not really ENJOYABLE. You have to turn it down to almost the lowest setting to play it reliably.

I played like 80 hours on steam deck. I don't think it's as optimized as Todd claims (RDR2 is much older and looks much better), but it plays alright.

No mods or anything, just settings tweaks.

I did not know you could play with a controller on PC. Is thist a steam customization for the deck ? (When I plug my xbox controller nothing happens in control settings or anywhere)

It is weird it doesn't work for you. I always use my Xbox controller when I play games on my pc with a very few exceptions because of the need of hot keys. I am playing with a Xbox one controller with Bluetooth. Before did I use a Xbox 360 controller with wire until it started to not listen to me anymore (dead zone grew and dpad was always unsure what direction I clicked).

It isn't a steam thing. But steam do have configurations so you can change the layout if you wish. For me is it plug and play but you can check out their documentation. They have a section at the bottom how you connect USB, wireless and Bluetooth.

https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hardware-network/controller/connect-xbox-wireless-controller-to-pc

I honestly couldn't tell you how it works. Maybe check input settings in game? The game isn't verified on deck so I wouldn't think steam has done anything specific to make the controller work.

I found it playable but being completely honest, the graphic settings are the lowest and while it looks fine enough for things nearby… shooting at enemies more than a few meters away means aiming under their name. Due to dumb circumstances making my gaming pc unavailable, I’m currently playing it “on my Mac” through GeForce Now.

I had no idea vampire survivor was such a hit. Feels like that would be a great handheld game.

It’s available on mobile apps stores I believe.

I really want to enjoy games like Fallout or GTA on the Deck but compared to mouse/keyboard it's just really bad. I cannot understand how so many people like to play games like CoD or Battlefield on consoles.

I usually use gamepad controls and try and shoehorn gyro as mouse input. Doesn't always work but when it does it's really decent for FPS all things considered.

I just had this horrific dream where my mouse input was functioning like a controller. I think it was PTSD from the days of aiming more with the characters movement than the joysticks.

Still dominated though. Headshots ftw

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Starfield ? How ?

It's just for one month

But how can a steamdeck run starfield ?

Keep in mind, theres a giant community behind yhe steamdeck, and if a game allows mods(especially bethesdas), theres always a modder who has a modlist for tweaks specifically for the deck.

I think it runs almost playably out of the box, so I would imagine it would work actually playably with a few mods, e.g. to adjust settings not accessible through graphics presets and to enable disk I/O cache.

The benefit of a smaller screen is that you need less resolution to make it look half decent and with all the optimizing valve does with proton i imagine its quite playable. But the way graphics where implemented in star-field is shit and there are no excuses.

It looks a bit🥔 and requires some ini file tweaking, but I can get get playable FPS out of it, 30-ish for the most part

I think these would be better if they worked like ratings charts and showed relative changes since last month.

Glad that Sea of Stars is so high on the list!

Glad to see I'm not the only with a spire habit that can't be kicked.

I want to rebuy it since it’s such a perfect Steam Deck game, but it’s hard to give up all my progression on Xbox!

You could almost certainly stream it from your Xbox to the deck if you wanted to.

Can't you copy the savegames?

I think only from PC Game Pass. I don’t have a Windows machine, although I guess I could dual boot the Steam Deck just to grab the files.

It's impressive to me that games made by small teams or solo artists are going toe to toe with games made by the entire Western hemisphere. Stardew Valley is being played more than RDR2?

A graphically demanding game being high on this list is more impressive to me. BG3 looks like a claymation game on the deck, I wasn't expecting it to be anywhere near as high.

I feel good for CDPR. They fumbled the launch of Cyberpunk, but people are still playing the crap out of it, so I guess they handled it well in the end. It must be horrible to have worked on a game for years, only for it to blow up the way Cyberpunk did.

Edit: Though I suppose the launch was only "fumbled" on last gen hardware.

The media outrage was disproportionate and completely disconnected from how it actually worked. It was a success from the start. As you said, the fumble was on consoles mostly.

It's certainly good though that they worked so long to make it even better IMO.

Brotato? Have no idea what's about, but certainly got me curious.

Check it out. It's a really fun game and perfect for the deck.

Also Broforce - no idea why it doesn't get mentioned more often, it's incredible on the deck

I love FROM games being all caps. Like Madvillain

I remember reading something about Japanese publishers using all caps because they don't use case in their own language. Something like that.

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I myself am still enjoying BG3 and Vampire Survivors on the deck. Not sure what game I will move to after BG3, but that won't be for another month or two at the pace I am going.

Vampire Survivors is still ging strong.

Baldur's Gate 3 is certainly a surprise. I tried it on my Steam Deck, and not only could I not figure out how to make the graphics look decent on my monitor, but I had a problem where the game would eventually stop accepting mouse input, forcing me to quit and relaunch. I didn't get far until I switched to the macOS version once it came out.

How are people playing that game on a Steam Deck?

It works fine for me, with a few small settings tweaks. I've probably logged ~70 of my ~310 playtime hours playing on Deck.

Of course it's mostly low settings, so it doesn't look as beautiful as it does running on my desktop via a 3080 at 1440p... but it looks good enough and runs well enough to be enjoyable on a handheld. I don't think I could enjoy an action-heavy game with the same performance, but for something turn-based that focuses more on the story, I'm having a blast.

That said, it sounds like that's the crux: I'm playing it in a portable fashion, on the Deck's screen directly, while it sounds like you're playing on an external monitor, with keyboard+mouse?

Yes; until D3DMetal came out, I was using my Steam Deck as a gaming PC, in order to play games not ported to macOS.

Out of those 20, 10 of them are either already on my deck or match my queue of games to play. Any reason to play skyrim special edition over legendary edition? I plan on playing the game without mods. I thought legendary edition would give better battery life. I do not remember is special edition has any worthwhile upgrades.

I think they both have the same battery life, but Anniversary has bundled Creator Community content with it.

I watched a video on the differences, but it didn’t really seem like it was anything other than graphical. Since battery is the same, maybe I’ll just install special edition then.

Pure vanilla, the differences arent much. The only one i recall was better water rendering.

Theres a difference now if you consider mods, but vanilla is (mostly) the same

Thanks, I played it before any dlc came out for the game and I was not blown away by the graphical improvements. I’m just going to stick with legendary edition. Maybe it won’t be any different but I just feel like it will be more performant.

Thanks, I played it before any dlc came out for the game and I was not blown away by the graphical improvements. I’m just going to stick with legendary edition. Maybe it won’t be any different but I just feel like it will be more performant.

Bookmarking this, thanks for posting ! I'll add some gems to my try list :)

So a steam deck... Is this a handheld laptop or a streaming device to your computer?

It's a handheld, standalone computer. It can do game streaming from a PC as well, but it's powerful enough to run games like Fallout 4 at 40 FPS.

Is 40 acceptable? All I ever see is people complaining if it's not 120 and I can't tell if it's just a meme or not. I play on console primarily for ease of use (I have toddlers), but I do have a pc that's mid range that does well but I just feel so isolated from my family every time I sit at the computer. Thinking about the steam deck but I know next to nothing of it.

What you find acceptable is entirely based on your personal preference, how much you've already been exposed to higher specs, and how privileged you are in hardware, so some people are memeing and others are serious based on these. If console and mid-range pc gaming is all you know, the Steam Deck provides similar performance, and it's a full on pc (with all the customization potential and non-gaming software availability you'd expect from a pc) in a handheld form factor, and a fairly console-like stock OS, if that's appealing to you. But if you want 120-240 fps on latest AAA games, no, you won't find the Steam Deck's performance acceptable, but then also you wouldn't be the target audience.

40 is a sweet spot between 30 and 60: feels much more smooth than 30, is much less demanding than 60. And by the way, 30 is acceptable too as long as it’s stable. Sure it will almost certainly feel less smooth than other options, but especially as you say you’re playing on console mostly… chances are you are already used to 30 fps. I, for example, feel the difference between 30 and 60 in Forza Horizon 5 (and the magic 40) but that’s not preventing me from doing well.

The one thing that I’m not sure has been mentioned yet, is that the Steam Deck targets 720p. The screen is small enough for that to work out fine.

The reason why 40 fps feels better is because even though its only 10 fps higher, the frame latency is half(25 ms) compared to 30(33.3 ms) and 60(16.6ms) on the two ends. So you work 33% harder for half the latency.

To put in perspective, the drop in latency (8.3 ms), is the same for example going from , 40 to 60, or 60(16.6) > 120(8.3 ms)

Steam Deck is only a 60Hz display (which your TV almost certainly is too) so anything over 60 fps isn't actually going to make a difference visually. That being said, if you're playing on a display capable of 120Hz, 120 fps will absolutely make a difference visually.

I use mine for indie games, mostly. I have a gaming computer for AAA titles. You can stream games from steam on your pc, but I haven't fucked with that much.

It performs way better than I expected, but I am one of those that requires higher frame rates for some titles so.

Framerates are mostly a personal preference.

The Steam Deck has roughly the same gaming performance as a PS4, but it's an actual PC so it can run all kinds of other software without hacky mods. It runs a version of Linux by default, but you could install Windows on it if that tickles your fancy.

People really play this many games in a month? Even when I played a lot I mostly focused on very few games.

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I'm playing three of these... Telling that Diablo is not there

Not on steam so wouldn't be on the list.

Diablo 4 plays really well on the Steam Deck. Too bad there's not more content, besides endless nightmare dungeons once you get to the endgame.

Diablo is not available on steam though.

All of those AAA and I’m here playing Suikoden 2…

Slay the Spire?

Binding of Isaac?

Fucking Stardew Valley!

What are you talking about? Nearly half of them are indie games.

You play at least 20 different games per month?

I'm pretty sure this is all Steam Deck users on Steam. But I could be wrong.

Makes sense. Sorry.

I was wondering why you were apologizing then I saw you were down voted like crazy. To be clear, I didn't downvote you. I can see why you would have initially thought this was from one person.

Yeah, I took it as stats from one person instead of the whole platform.

Time to play spot the actual RPGs.

I'm going with 4