Valve is Providing Developers with Steam Deck Metrics to Help with Optimization

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It's no secret that the Steam Deck can be a tricky device to optimize for in the year 2026. With the introduction of Unreal Engine 5, stutters and increased RAM usage are just a couple of the challenges developers face when working with a system that has limited resources.

In an effort to aid developers in their quest for optimization on the Steam Deck, Valve is now providing developers with performance metrics so they can see how their game is performing on the Steam Deck. Of course, only performance metrics from users who have agreed to share their performance data will be shown to developers.

Interestingly, data is currently only shown for Steam Deck Verified titles, so for now, we probably won't see much use come from this data, as the games it works for already work well (for the most part) on the Steam Deck. But Valve does say they plan on expanding the feature to games rated as Steam Deck Playable in the future.

The feature also notes that "Variance" is not taken into account yet. This is crucial, as if certain parts of the game perform much worse than others, it could falsely indicate to developers that there isn't a performance issue with the game. Players who are sat on the main menu for a large period of time, for example, could skew data and make the developer think the Steam Deck is running their game well. Once variance is accounted for, developers will be informed if the frame rate is truly stable or if large changes are occurring.

We also don't know how it will account for users who change their graphical settings or modify their game, as that could also skew the data.

You may also have noticed that you are sometimes asked whether you agree with a Verified rating when you quit a game on your Steam Deck. Now, that data will be sent to the developers of the game, so they can see if Steam Deck users are having issues with their title, and they can investigate further. This goes beyond just performance, and can include issues such as UI scaling problems and problems with controls.

No doubt, the Steam Machine and Steam Frame will also begin to benefit from this feature when they launch later in 2026.

Source: GamingOnLinux

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