ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies Developers Talk Steam Deck Optimization

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It's always a nice surprise when we hear of developers doing specific optimizations for the Steam Deck, and ZA/UM's game ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies did exactly that. Although there were some issues, we did find the game playable on the Steam Deck in our review.

The team at ZA/UM even made a specific Steam Deck trailer for the game, which you can watch below:

So what specific optimizations and adjustments did the team make to get the game to a playable state on the Steam Deck? Well, first off, they opted to use Vulkan to render the game, rather than DirectX, removing any performance loss Linux might get from translating between DirectX and Vulkan. According to their testing, it increased performance by around 23%. They also added support for the Steam Deck's 1280x800 resolution, instead of the more common 1280x720, giving us some valuable extra screen real estate, essential in a very text-heavy game.

They also applied framerate caps by default to Steam Deck devices, 30 FPS on the LCD model, and 45 FPS on the OLED, in order to give a more stable experience, while cutting down on battery drain.

The recent D21 patch also addresses issues due to RAM constraints on the Steam Deck, so if you had been experiencing crashes playing ZERO PARADES on your Steam Deck, you might want to try again and see if it's fixed.

The Head of Engineering at ZA/UM, Dr. Kay Ross, also mentioned how optimizing for the Steam Deck and other low-end devices is just good practice:

"The team was keen on making ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies a great experience on Steam Deck. Any optimisations we make for the platform also help people on all other ones too, both in performance and accessibility. For a game with large amounts of text to digest, making the font scalable makes it more readable for the smaller Steam Deck screen. It is then also more readable for anyone on desk bound platforms who might require larger fonts for any other reason. By optimising scenes, VFX, lighting and assets to run better on the Steam Deck, those areas also run smoother for everyone."

Dr. Kay Ross, Head of Engineering, ZA/UM Studio

ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is now available on Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG, and until July 9, 2026, it's 10% off for everyone and 20% off for owners of Disco Elysium in the Steam Summer Sale.

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