Obsidian’s survival game Grounded saw its full launch after spending nearly two years in early access development. Since that time, Valve has continued to list the new game on Steam as “unsupported” for their Steam Deck, claiming that it “currently doesn’t function” on the platform and that work is still being done to get the game running. However, if you can live with lowered settings and a few performance dips, Grounded can play just fine on the Deck.
Will Grounded run on Steam Deck?
Despite Valve formally claiming that Grounded is unsupported on the Steam Deck on the game’s store page, it is still currently playable on the device. Once downloaded and installed, the game will boot and run as intended without any major hiccups.
Grounded has native controller support and accepts the Deck’s default Joystick Trackpad control scheme. Mouse Trackpad and Gyro controls also function as normal, making optimal use of the Deck’s unique hardware. If none of these default control schemes suit your preferences, custom control layouts work in Grounded as well.
Related: Is Grounded cross platform/crossplay? Answered
While Grounded may run on the Steam Deck, that doesn’t mean that it runs particularly well in all settings and configurations. When on Epic or High graphics settings, you can expect to see significantly lowered frames per second on average, with this performance dipping even lower during periods of more intense gameplay. Additionally, while both the Deck and the game itself feature AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution, activating both settings will dip this frame rate even lower.
If you’re determined to play this title on the Steam Deck, we recommend that you drop your graphics settings to low or medium and refrain from using FSR in any capacity for the time being. There’s a fair chance that Obsidian and Valve’s combined efforts can introduce some optimization to Grounded’s Steam Deck performance in the meantime. Alternatively, you could try playing it on Xbox as a part of Game Pass.
