No, Steam Deck isn’t intentionally blocking games from installing, Valve explains

The Steam Deck has had some time on the market now — enough to nab the number one best-selling spot and to cause a kerfuffle about game installs. Steam Deck-compatible games aren’t being blocked from installing, but there is a known technical hiccup on Valve’s part.

The murmuring started on Twitter, where it was believed that Demon Gaze Extra was being prevented from installing on the device. It could, however, be installed onto a desktop and then transferred onto the Steam Deck. There was a concern that Demon Gaze and other games were being blocked from running on Steam Deck. So what gives?

PC Gamer reached out to Valve and got the answer. “Before launch, we added a feature to allow developers to tag certain content/depots as being relevant only for Deck customers,” came the response. Developers could use this for specific tweaks like default graphics settings on Steam Deck, but there was an error. “There was a technical issue with the way this feature was shipped,” Valve continued, “and so unfortunately some content was incorrectly tagged as the reverse.” In other words, everything but a Steam Deck would work.

This has since been remedied, so further Steam releases won’t be affected by the error. However, previously released titles may still be prone to this installation issue. Valve is “working with partners to fix [it].” Hopefully, this can be fully resolved in a future update. Previous updates added a quicker offline mode and an optional 15 FPS cap.