Death Stranding 2 Is Not Playable On The Steam Deck

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Even though PlayStation may be pivoting away from PC releases, there are still some great games on the Steam Deck that came from PlayStation. Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, Ghost of Tsushima, and God of War have all been great to play on the go. However, I’ve been putting a lot of hope into their next release on PC, Death Stranding 2. It was even said to be getting optimized for handhelds, which made me even more hopeful that it would run well on the Steam Deck. So, with the game now released, I decided to test it out for myself. And my hopes were all but dashed.

The game has a specific “Portable” preset designed for handheld PCs, which gave me some hope initially. Usually, this means they tailored the settings for limited hardware, including the Steam Deck. Sadly, it isn’t enough.

As soon as the game loads in, performance immediately tanks. With the portable preset, I was getting around 20-25 FPS. And this went further down the second I started moving. At one point, just walking around during the opening tutorial went down to 19 FPS consistently. I also noticed that in some scenarios, the low-quality preset performed better than the portable one. This was all with the PICO upscaling set to performance, which performs slightly better than FSR3 at ultra performance.

There were some moments, especially inside buildings, when the framerate would reach the mid-30s. However, as soon as we step outside, it goes right back down. This got even worse later on when I started attacking enemies and getting caught in sandstorms, and I even saw the framerate drop to 10 FPS.

And for those thinking lossless scaling or frame generation could save the game, don’t use it. The base frame rate is too low for it to work well. It will introduce stutters, input lag, and possibly make the frame rate feel lower. Frame generation technologies need a good base frame rate to latch onto, but with this one being so low, it just doesn’t feel good.

It is possible the game will get patches that make it more playable on the deck, and I do trust Nixxes Software when it comes to pouring and optimizing, but there’s only so much that can be done. Because of that, I don’t recommend getting Death Stranding 2 in its current state if you’re planning to play primarily on the Steam Deck.

Death Standing 2 is $69.99 on Steam, but you can save some money by getting it on Fanatical for $62.99.

The Fanatical links above are using an affiliate link, which gives us a little back from sales at no extra charge to you. All proceeds go back into SDHQ and its development.

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