Older Call of Duty Games Get Performance Improvements on Steam Deck From SteamOS Update

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One of my favorite things to do with the Steam Deck is go back and play through older games that should run perfectly on it. However, that’s not always the case. Some games have problems running even if they’re over 15 years old, and it could be caused by a multitude of issues. With some of the older Call of Duty games, this is apparent. But out of nowhere, updates can completely fix the issues, and that’s the case with these games.

Yesterday, Valve updated SteamOS with a very small update that specifically added the NTSync driver. Alone, this isn’t going to see massive improvements across all games. But with some of the older Call of Duty games, we do, and the difference can be staggering.

Specifically, I tested and confirmed that Call of Duty: World at War, Black Ops 1, and Black Ops 2 all see significant increases in performance after this update. While the most obvious is with Black Ops 2, it is still clear to see that there are improvements in the other games as well. This is very significant because there have been minor issues in these games, regardless of how old they are.

To take advantage of this, though, you will need to use a different Proton layer to run the games, Proton GE. This is a community-fork of proton created by Glorious Eggroll. The layer usually includes fixes and codecs that Valve can’t put in the stable version of Proton. With the Call of Duty games, Proton GE will automatically use the new NTSync driver to play the game, and that’s where we see the performance improvements.

If you don’t have this layer yet, you can follow our guide on how to get it on your Steam Deck.

It’s also worth noting that this is not going to be the case for every older game or the newer Call of Duty games, either. This is a specific use-case that takes advantage of the new driver. There may be other games that will be improved with this, but don’t assume it’s going to improve every experience. Still, World at War and Black Ops 1 and 2 are classic Call of Duty games that are still worth playing today, so I’m very glad that there have been improvements to make it significantly more playable on the go.

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