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Being able to play Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on PC is a joy in itself, but trying to play on the Steam Deck isn't great. There are a ton of compromises to be made, which we noted in our review, and while it's still enjoyable, it isn't the best experience. While there may be mods that could be released to help performance out, it looks like Valve and the Proton developers are making moves of their own to make the experience a little bit better.

As spotted by Liam from GamingOnLinux, the Proton Hotfix branch was updated with two specific fixes for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Both of these are meant to fix GPU hangs, which adds a PSO retain workaround and workaround for missing CS barrier. These fixes do apply to the Steam Deck and fix major bugs that have caused GPU crashing. I was lucky not to have encountered these myself, but I am glad others who have will no longer have this issue.
Valve and Proton developers are most likely looking into ways to improve the experience overall, which could result in improved performance or visual fidelity. It's going to be awesome if the experience can be improved, and I will be the first one to recommend playing it on the Deck if we can somehow even out the framerate and make the visuals a little better.
The Proton Hotfix layer should now be the default for Rebirth, so it will automatically download and update the next time you try to play the game.
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