It hasn’t been released yet, but so far Valve has been a huge hit with Steam Deck. The device seems to have convinced gamers since pre-orders exploded in a few minutes. On the North American specialist press side, the first were mostly premium testers Surprised machine promises.

If we are to trust this general enthusiasm, Steam Deck could mark the beginning of a resounding success story for Gabe Newell’s forces. So it’s only natural that Valve really strives to ensure its success over time. We already knew that the company was working on a specific CPU driver, in collaboration with AMD. Today, we learned that both suites are already working on compatibility with Windows 11. According to Greg Comer, chief engineer at Steam Deck, the current results are quite satisfactory. “At the moment, there is nothing telling us that there will be any problem with Windows 11, explains the engineer.

In fact, Valve’s new platform should allow Microsoft’s sealed operating system to be installed – even if it comes with a proprietary version of Linux. However, we do not have any additional information about the modalities of this installation. But this compatibility with Windows 11, which appeared recently, is necessarily excellent news for the sustainability of the system.

“Anti-cheat”, the Achilles heel of the proton

to me the edgeWindows Support will resolve one of the major issues in the architecture chosen by Valve engineers. As a reminder, you’ll be using Steam Deck Proton: This is a compatibility layer, designed specifically to run Windows games on a Linux platform – like the Steam Deck.

The concern is that Proton has been known to have trouble dealing with anti-cheat software. A consequence that may prevent players from enjoying certain games forces the player to install these countermeasures. By playing directly on Windows rather than going through Proton, it should be possible to overcome the problem … provided that you accept a compatibility that is not necessarily optimal, especially at the interface level. See you in 2022 to see if the approach is the right one!