General Steam Deck compatibility with some EA games has been spotty in recent weeks, with Origin’s replacement launcher throwing a spanner in the works. Fortunately, Valve is working diligently to make sure proprietary launchers remain compatible with the gaming PC, and now The Sims 4 and more are finally playable again.
The new EA App hasn’t played nice with the Steam Deck since it launched back in November due to incompatibilities with the SteamOS Proton compatibility layer. This rendered a plethora of the publisher’s games incompatible with the handheld PC, but Valve has since deemed them otherwise.
As highlighted by Gaming on Linux, the likes of The Sims 4, Battlefield 1, and Titanfall are now ‘Playable’ on the device. Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order joins these ranks too, so you may wish to boot up the action-adventure game again while you wait for the Jedi Survivor release date.
EA’s disregard for Steam Deck compatibility is perhaps indicative of a potentially bigger problem for Valve’s handheld. Some developers are doubtful about the device’s longevity, which could partly explain why it’s taken Valve itself to resolve these issues. However, if the passion of the Steam Deck community is anything to go by, it’ll be sometime before this portable PC is cast aside to gather dust in a drawer somewhere.
Gabe and his team are already working hard on a Steam Deck 2, so there’s hope the company can give the current iteration’s something of a spit shine. For now, we know Valve is interested in improving the battery life and screen, but a successor may have a couple of other surprises up its sleeve too.
