Don't Let The Rating Fool You, DOOM 1+2 Is Fantastic on Steam Deck

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Yesterday, Nightdive Studios blew our minds again when they dropped an enhanced version of DOOM 1 and DOOM 2 on Steam. This was done in celebration for QuakeCon, which is going on now, but it just shows how incredible this studio is at remastering or enhancing older titles to be more modern without losing their original feel. This is another example, and they went so much further than you could expect. They packaged DOOM 1 and 2 together with expansions and new episodes, brought it to their KEX engine, added an in-game mod browser, online multiplayer, accessibility options, better visuals, modern controller support, 60 FPS support, and more.

But for whatever reason, the game has an "Unsupported" rating on Steam, which would signify that the game doesn't work or run well on the Steam Deck. Valve's Verified system does have some issues though, and knowing how fantastic Nightdive is with supporting the Deck, I wanted to test it for myself. However, I wasn't surprised by my findings: The game runs flawlessly on the Steam Deck.

I went ahead and tested every expansion and episode included in this package, and all of them run flawlessly. 90 FPS at under 7W battery drain, with no changes or compromises whatsoever. It is one of the best-running games on the Steam Deck, and while it makes sense since these are such old games, it is fully updated with a new engine and better visuals, yet it still runs like a charm.

The only thing I could think of that might make this "Unsupported" is the DOS versions of the games included in this purchase. You can select the original DOS versions of each game, and that doesn't work well with the Deck. It has no controller support, so unless you create a keyboard+mouse controller scheme, you can't utilize these. The DOS versions are still playable and run, but it just doesn't recognize controller support. Technically, this should be "Playable" due to needing a community controller configuration, but the remastered/enhanced versions of the games run perfectly, with just the tacked-on DOS versions needing a workaround.

Valve's Verified system has some fundamental issues, and these ratings can influence if people will purchase a game or not. It's not great to see an Unsupported badge for a perfectly working game, which is something we did see recently with Creatures of Ava (though the rating was changed as soon as the game released).

I still feel strongly that the best way to fix the system without adding more work for Valve is to change what the Verified badge means. It should mean that the game works well with Proton and runs on the Steam Deck rather than it being a "Great Experience." The system not being perfect does make our job still relevant, but I don't want to mislead people with ratings like these.

DOOM + DOOM 2 is perfect on the Steam Deck, and you can buy it for yourself on Steam for $9.99. It is easily a Best on Deck game, and well worth your time if you want some retro shooters to play on the go.

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