Every game that requires a launcher should have a new “unreliable” badge. Here’s why:

First things first: let me be clear that the all the games I talk about here I bought on STEAM. Not on a separate launcher. I’m not using Heroic Launcher, I’m not using Lutris. These are games bought and installed on STEAM.

Earlier this year Jedi Fallen Order had a verified badge, so I bought it. It played alright, but online only. If I happened to be offline, which is a plausible scenario, since the deck is a portable device, the game wouldn’t pass the EA App boot screen. At the time, I’ve seen some people able to play it offline, and some not. It didn’t help my situation though.
A few days later EA updated their launcher and it straight up broke the game. The game just wouldn’t boot, it would just cycle the EA app install screen. Then the game got an unsupported badge.
Fast forward to today, I take a glance at my library and see that it has the “playable” badge.
The thing is, it’s not even worth it installing it again, because the EA App can just break without warning again. This game had 3 different badges in less than a year.

Another example: GTA 4. It installs the Rockstar Launcher. Once I was in the game, I could play the game offline. I just needed to click on “offline mode” on the Rockstar Launcher screen whenever I would boot the game offline. Neat.
Fast forward to 2 days ago, I’m offline, I launch GTA 4, and it says it needs to update the Rockstar Launcher to be able to boot the game. It’s like the launcher had a timer for the offline mode. I can’t just launch the game once, then have it there ready for whenever I wanna play it.

This kind of issue can happen to most EA games, most Rockstar Games, most Ubisoft games… either the game is “verified” or “playable”. Think about it: Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk require a launcher, and they can just stop working tomorrow. CDProjekt just needs to push an update for their launcher that for whatever reason breaks it on the deck. Both of them have “verified” badges.

These games are a non ignorable portion of the steam library. The “verified” and “playable” badges shouldn’t be hostages of the proven unreliability of third party launchers.

Whenever I think of taking my deck with me, I need to think of what I wanna play, and “ready” it by trying to launch the game, online or offline, before getting out.
If I don’t do that, there’s a good chance the situations above can repeat themselves on a plane, or on the long stretch without signal during my train commute. It’s not a smooth experience for a portable device. I only have 20 installed games and this is already an issue.

There’s a word for this kind of software: unreliable. If a game can go from “verified” to “unsupported” to “playable” whenever, those badges end up not meaning anything.

An “unreliable” badge on all games that require a launcher wouldn’t solve the issue, but would be a good warning to any customer that thinks that by purchasing a “verified” game, it’s guaranteed to work.

Now another issue, and this is about the Steam Deck community.
This post was heavily inspired by a fellow redditor that, after I pointed out the issue I had with GTA 4 on the deck, insisted to me that actually the game has zero issues and it just works. The actual comment was:

GTA4 on steam deck works perfectly with zero issue. Play the steam version. It’s 6 bucks right now but I got it for 3 bucks in a humble bundle.
PC gaming on deck isn’t inconvenient as long as you play the games that are on steam. So if you’re sticking with steam games, Steam Deck works as advertised, just like the Switch: install the game and play.
For more you’ll need to educate yourself more. You don‘t have to play shit looking ports on the Switch, that cost even 20 times more. There are hundreds of great tutorials of how to make everything work on the Deck, for games not “natively“ supported.
Or don’t and play the steam verified games. Just don’t lie around, because that’s not cool for people who actually want to play great looking games on the Deck, at a fraction of the price they are on the Switch.

So after being told to “educate” myself and being called a liar, here’s what I have to say to anyone in this community that agrees with the statement above:

The deck is a great device, but it’s still PC gaming, and PC gaming, half of the time, sure isn’t “install the game and play”. Half of the time you’ll need to tinker with something to make things work.
The deck is not a console, it’s not an iPhone… it’s a PC. And it’s not just a PC: it’s a portable linux PC, running mostly windows software through a translation layer. It’s a miracle that it works as well as it does. The deck is made for tinkerers, there’s a reason it’s as open as it is. There’s no shame on it.
Whenever you ignore all these issues and tell the world they don’t exist, it becomes toxic insecurity. Don’t go to r/Switch to say that the deck works just as seamless, because it’s just not true. Someone might believe you and end up disappointed, then get gaslighted on reddit by someone just like you.