Concord Could Mark The End of PlayStation Support for Steam Deck

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Of all the games we can play on the Steam Deck and hundreds of thousands we can enjoy, it was PlayStation titles that really wowed me. It was insane seeing this portable PC playing some of the biggest and best games. At the time, it seemed this was exactly what PlayStation wanted, and it seemed to actively discuss and endorse playing these games on the go, giving us a lot of confidence in the brand for the Deck. Unfortunately, it seems that time may end, and their newest PC release, Concord, could be what starts that trend.

For some background, PlayStation started releasing games on PC/Steam as far back as 2020, starting with Horizon Zero Dawn. From there, we had Days Gone, God of War, Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered (and Miles Morales), Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Returnal, The Last of Us Part 1, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Helldivers 2, Horizon Forbidden West, and Ghost of Tsushima. Except for Returnal, all of these games do run on the Steam Deck and can run quite well. Most of these games, including Spider-Man and God of War, were even highlighted by PlayStation, the developer studios, and Valve to show off how to play them on the go. It seemed like an important part of playing on PC to PlayStation, and it was great.

Then, we come to the Helldivers 2 controversy. Earlier this year, PlayStation announced it would start requiring players to connect a PlayStation Network (PSN) account to the game to play it. While this is something that a lot of bigger companies do, like Ubisoft and EA, PlayStation received a lot of backlash due to the requirement being added later, lack of effective communication when people initially purchased the game, and rendering the game unpurchasable in over 100 countries that can't make PSN accounts. PlayStation ended up returning to this requirement, but the game is still unavailable in those disabled countries, which left a sour taste in our mouths.

After that, we had a new announcement for Ghost of Tsushima's impending release. The game would be the first to utilize a new overlay that requires connecting to a PSN account. This was communicated well before the release, so no fault there, but this posed a new problem: the overlay is incompatible outside of Windows. This means you will not be allowed to play the game on any operating system other than Windows, rendering it impossible to play on the Steam Deck. Ghost of Tsushima's developer, Sucker Punch, did clarify that this will only apply to the multiplayer aspect, and single-player would still be playable without connecting, but multiplayer is an aspect of the game that can't be played on the go.

That leads us to Concord, the next PlayStation release coming to PC. This full multiplayer-only game utilizes the new overlay and integration, and it isn't playable on Steam Deck. If you try to start it, you are met almost immediately with an error mentioning that Wine, proton, and the Steam Deck are not compatible with the game:

Now, one could say that this is because the game is multiplayer only, and that seems to be the consensus as to why an account is required to begin with, but I do have my worries. After Concord, we will have God of War Ragnarok coming to PC, and it has the same exact warnings that Concord does, yet it is a fully single-player game. It looks more likely that PlayStation is just integrating the PC overlay into their released games, which makes sense, but because it isn't supported outside of Windows, it wouldn't be playable on the Steam Deck.

It feels weird seeing how PlayStation treated the Steam Deck before this change. By pushing the overlay and PSN into their games without any Linux or Steam Deck support, it effectively kills any chance of the games running on the device. I truly hope that this will only affect multiplayer games, but with PlayStation releasing more games onto PC, this is definitely up in the air.

There are rumors that PlayStation has even created a storefront to sell its games, and this could be a reason why these overlays and PSN requirements are joining the newer titles. It forces players to have a PlayStation account, which inflates their account numbers. If they make a storefront, there won't be any 30% they have to give to another company, and they can keep all the profit from their sold titles.

If all of this was compatible with Linux/Steam Deck, I wouldn't have any issues personally. Many games require an account to link, so I am not that off-put by this, but the locking off from different regions and playing them on the Steam Deck is a little worrying. I hope this only applies to multiplayer games or multiplayer components of other games, but time will tell. This could all be avoided if the overlay was compatible with Linux, and I wish they had waited until it was ready to start integrating it, but it's never too late!

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