In a striking development, Ubisoft has revealed that the humble Steam Deck should be able to run Assassin’s Creed Shadows basically from the get-go. Now, do keep a pinch of salt at hand, but I think this is genuinely great news, even if only from the perspective of hardware support.
This information comes from Ubisoft’s official Assassin’s Creed Twitter account, where the publisher claimed that it would support Valve’s acclaimed gaming handheld with the caveat that the official classification of the game’s performance was still pending. At the time of writing, Shadows is classified as “Unsupported” by the Steam Deck with no explanation as to what might be going on with it. Not a great look, but it’s not a deal-breaker by any stretch of the imagination.
A crucial tidbit to keep in mind here is that Ubisoft claims the old GTX 1070 is a baseline minimum to be able to run Shadows at all. The Steam Deck APU performs roughly at the same level.
Is the Steam Deck really that underpowered, then?
I was firmly in the “Steam Deck is too weak for AAA gaming” camp until very recently, when I gave Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 a fair shake on the handheld. To be perfectly honest, you do need to cap the game at 30 FPS for the Deck to keep up with it, but come on. That’s a ridiculously impressive feat for a tiny little APU running in a frankly meager 20W envelope. This same point was driven home further still when Ubisoft pushed out claims of AC: Shadows being playable on the Deck as well.
On that front, I’d advise waiting for third-party reviews (I recommend SteamDeckHQ‘s assessment, specifically). Regardless of that, the idea that Ubisoft might be championing its own flagship make-it-or-break-it release as Steam Deck compatible in 2025 is excellent news for the device.
Though I do use my OLED Deck a whole lot almost daily, I don’t play cutting-edge titles on it. Instead, it’s used for older games, like the awesome MachineGames Wolfenstein titles, and a whole host of indie releases.
Imagine my surprise when I saw that the Deck can pull its weight in Civilization 7, Warriors: Abyss, Two Point Museum, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, and Sonic X Shadow Generations just fine. To say nothing of the aforementioned Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, which is a joy to behold on a handheld. I grew up with dedicated Java games on classic old Sony-Ericsson feature phones: to see a Steam Deck pull this off is nothing short of phenomenal in my book.
It’s all too easy to forget just how capable the Steam Deck actually is in context. It’s going to be particularly interesting to see how the Deck fares compared to the Nintendo Switch 2, as that’ll be the next low-end baseline for years to come.
There are no two ways about it: the Steam Deck’s hardware set is definitely getting long in the tooth by now. If you can’t handle low FPS caps, it won’t be a good fit no matter what you do with it, but I’ve previously discussed why a high frame rate isn’t the only thing that matters when it comes to PC gaming performance. Besides, there’s no denying one simple fact: the Deck is a neat and lovingly designed device that punches well above its weight. How much longer before that stops being the case? Well, that depends entirely on the specific games you’re playing, doesn’t it? The next Asassin’s Creed game after Shadows is unlikely to do well on it, though.
