For the lucky of you already gaming on your Steam Deck and adventurous enough to plug a keyboard in with a switch to Desktop mode, you've already authored some reports on ProtonDB. And that's excellent.

How about we make things easier?

I'm happy to announce that we're officially ready for formal Steam Deck reports at ProtonDB! I'm a little embarassed to share that Valve has graciously provided me with a dev unit to prepare the site for this release. I'll have to save my extended thoughts on it for another day, but for now I'll sum up: yes, this is game changing. It's a PC in a portable format and a joy to explore.

It does however present some unique challenges for traditional web development:

Wait. Ignore that picture, not ready yet.

So back to the main quest: here's the headliners for this release:

• Your preferences and devices are now persisted across anywhere you log in.
• Along with PC devices, you can now add Steam Deck devices
• You'll need to be on Steam Deck desktop mode to add it as a device, but thanks to user persistence you only need to do this once and can then write from your PC or wherever you prefer.
• You can now write reports as either PC or Steam Deck reports, either on a PC or Steam Deck, from your pool of devices.

Valve's Deck Verified program, having just crossed 1,000 of verified + playable status, has given us an excellent foundation for officially-sanctioned Linux gaming, but there's still an important role for community reports.

It's to expand the list of what we know we can play. It's to keep the searchlight on games that are not yet supported, or ones that are officially supported but shipped a broken update. Tips and tinkerings to help each other out.

Steam Deck gaming not only benefits from general Linux compatibility advice, but has a set of other unique considerations to juggle as well. Two that come to mind are controller configuration and battery life. So I've added a step in the report flow for these and I'm sure there's more we can add.

And here's what a report currently looks like from a Steam Deck device (this will certainly be iterated on):

That's all for now. All that's left is to make a shout: March forth your gaming, and remember to bring on your Steam Deck reports!

OK, one more shout: getting the site up to shape for this release has been a giant effort. Want to see more goody goodness? Consider joining as a Patreon supporter. Thank you very much to those of you who have!

Epilogue: the rest of the changelist:

• Device: Save button for name moved next to input.
• Device: Icon for invalid system info.
• Device: Tooltip on system info validity icon.
• Device: Regression fix: Invalid system info accurately detected again.
• Profile: Library information now moved to the right side of Preferences.
• Tooltips: No longer present a pointing cursor as if they are a link.
• Contribute: Will no longer ignore Next on 'Setup' step when you have exactly two devices. le sigh
• Contribute: GE version validator updated to accept new naming pattern (thanks @Zato for identifying).
• Mobile style fix: Padding removed that caused page to scroll unnecessarily horizontally.
• Mobile bug fix: Routing: Scrolls to top on internal links.
• Mobile bug fix: Reports: Reports authored before the latest variant flow now show appropriate playtime instead of NaN.

--migelius (@buck)