Outbound Gets Steam Deck Verified Badge And Estimated Performance

If you haven't yet, follow us on X (Twitter), Mastodon, or Bluesky to know when we post new articles, and join our Reddit or Subscribe to us on YouTube to check out our content and interact with our awesome community. Thank you for supporting us!

Over the past year, there have been a few games that have continually appeared in my feed, and one of those is Outbound. In this game, you’ll be building your own cozy home on wheels as you explore a very vibrant world. There will be a whole upgrade system, customizing your own vehicle, and even being able to take care of your own dog. And earlier today, the game finally got its Steam Deck Verified badge ahead of its release.

With this badge, Valve has evaluated the game and confirmed that it is fully usable with the default controller configuration, shows the correct controller icons, has legible text, and the default graphical configuration performs well. While the system isn’t always the best, it is great to see that it should at least run on the go.

However, developer Square Glade Games took it one step further. In an announcement they posted to the Steam community, they confirm that the game is verified on the Deck, but also let us know the expected performance for the system. They say that the game is going to run at around 30-40 FPS on the Deck, saying it is in line with other 3D games on the device.

Just to set expectations, while you can push higher performance on gaming PCs (60+ or way more FPS), the Steam Deck version runs at a stable 30-40 FPS, which is in line with most 3D games on the system.

Square Glade Games - Steam Community Post

While this can be debated, since there are some really great 3D games that run quite well, I don’t know many open games like this that do, so I would consider this performance solid.

And looking at the system requirements, this sounds about right. The CPU and GPU requirements are within what the Deck can handle, but they are on the higher side. However, it isn’t asking for a lot of RAM or storage space, which is fantastic. So, I would say that this is pretty in line with expectations set by the requirements.

Still, just seeing that the team has taken care, not only to get the green checkmark, but also to be upfront about performance, makes me excited and optimistic about playing on the Deck. I always love seeing teams that are confident enough in their own game to be realistic about what the performances are and how they will be, so I’m quite happy.

Outbound can be wishlisted on Steam ahead of its April 23rd release.

If you enjoyed this article, check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety of game reviews and news that will help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got you covered!