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I am a huge Star Wars fan, and since its announcement, I have been extremely excited for Star Wars: Outlaws. The first take on an open-world Star Wars game has completely energized me, and I was lucky enough to get a review code from Ubisoft for the game. I haven't had enough time to play it to provide a review yet, so that will be coming soon, but I did have enough time to test the game out a bit and see how it plays on the Steam Deck. Unfortunately, the answer to how it plays is a bit hard because it doesn't actually start.
While the game can be downloaded through Ubisoft Connect, boot, and even get to the main menu. But as soon as you try to load into the game, it will freeze, and you will have to reboot your Steam Deck. I tried the game through the DRM directly and through Lutris, as well as different Proton layers, but nothing was working. I even tried loading into a new game and a save that has progressed a bit to see if maybe it was the initial cutscene making things crash, and the UMA Buffer change + CryoUtilities, but nope. Each time it tried to load into the game, it froze.
I can't say I am sure why this happens, but it could be something on Ubisoft or Valve's side. I do hope we will see a fix, as I would love to try getting this running on the Deck, but for now, I would say steer clear. I have heard a little about Windows performance for the Deck too, and multiple reports suggest that it isn't running super well, with some areas hitting below 20 FPS. The game does have FSR 3, and it does help, but it sounds like it's a bit too powerful. I was even getting some drops on my AYANEO KUN, which uses an APU similar to the ROG Ally (7840U) and a 75Wh battery. It's possible this will smoothen out when a new AMD driver update drops though.
I am enjoying my time with the game though, and if you have a more powerful desktop PC, or a Windows handheld, it may be worth your time. Our full review will be coming soon, and I look forward to talking about it!
Star Wars: Outlaws is available now for the Gold or Ultimate edition purchasers, while the base game is available for $69.99. You can also play it right now with Ubisoft+, the company's subscription service, which is significantly cheaper, but will renew monthly to keep access.
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Hopefully it will be on Steam in six months like Ubisoft title Avatar:Frontiers of Pandora and not like Ubisoft title Assassin’s Creed: Mirage which is still not on Steam after however long it’s been.
I wonder why there is such vast differences in how long games take to get to Steam. Anyway once it comes to Steam we will have Valve working on getting it to run on the Deck if possible.
It is ridiculous how Ubisoft takes a game where I would buy the ultimate edition now and refuses to sell it to me until some point in the future where they sell it at a deep discount. That’s just bad business in their futile attempt to dictate to everyone how and where they buy their games. I think most of us wait for Steam.
Ubisoft seems to like to keep their "key" franchises to their own platform, such as Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, both of which take over a year to come to Steam.
Whereas games like The Crew, Avatar, and Skull and Bones launched 6 months after release on Steam.
Was excited about the game as well, sad to see it wont even start on the Deck. Spent an hour trying to figure out what am I doing wrong and then seen this article. Thanks for sharing your experience! Will look forward to patches — hope they'll fix the game.