Valve is quietly backtracking on the Steam Deck rating for Spider-Man 2 after it was controversially upgraded to Verified in February. More embarrassing is that the reason for this demotion is exactly what the community fed back within hours of the game being Verified.
While some of the best Steam Deck games don’t necessarily run at a buttery smooth 60fps with high graphical settings, there is an expectation that Verified games don’t require tinkering of any kind. When Spider-Man 2 was Verified following patch three, waves of player feedback suggested this was a mistake, and now it appears that Valve agrees.
In my testing of Spider-Man 2 following patch three, it was clear that while performance had gotten better on the Steam Deck, it still wasn’t perfect, and settings needed to be adjusted, a faux pas for a Verified game.
Now, Valve has demoted the game to Playable for this very reason, because the default graphical settings aren’t good enough. There is every chance that Nixxes could fix this in a future patch, and it could regain Verified status, but for now, this is more of a hit to Valve’s reputation than the developer.
It comes off the back of criticism for allowing Spider-Man 2 to be Verified in the first place. This also sparked debate over which Verified games don’t deserve their ratings over on the Steam Deck Reddit. Baldur’s Gate 3 and Mortal Kombat 1 are constant targets.
For me personally, my immediate instinct was to recheck Horizon Forbidden West and Ghost of Tsushima, two games I’ve been raving about regarding their respective Unsupported ratings on the Deck.
Horizon runs fine with settings changes, just like Spider-Man 2, so why is it treated/rated differently? Likewise, Ghost of Tsushima runs great, but a co-op online mode is incompatible with Linux, so the game as a whole is slapped with the lowest rating.
It’s these inconsistencies that frustrate me the most. If Valve is to persist with Steam Deck hardware and the rollout of SteamOS to partner devices, the trustworthiness of the rating system needs to be addressed.
If you’re after some extras to make the most of your handheld, you can check out our best Steam Deck accessories guide for some inspiration.
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