Valve Adds Steam Deck Frame Rate Reporting Tools for Developers

Since the launch of the Steam Deck, Valve has been steadily updating SteamOS with new features in order to improve the gaming experience on its gaming handheld, all the while working with developers and providing them with tools to make it easier to support the Steam Deck. The latest beta update to the Steamworks dashboard for partners—developers and publishers—comes in the form of frame rate reporting for SteamOS users. With the new feature, game developers whose games have received Steam Deck Verified status will be able to access data gathered from Steam Deck users who opted into frame rate reporting.

Currently, the feature will provide game developers with a graph of average frame rate data for the 30 days, but Valve says that it will later add additional information about frame rate fluctuations, giving developers even more information to use to optimize the game. Valve says that it has added frame rate reporting to the Steamworks platform in order to help developers address user feedback from gamers who disagree with Steam Deck Verified ratings, stating that this data “can be valuable for developers to better understand the experiences of customers who disagree, especially in the context of a specific title or update.” In the future, it will also expand this frame rate data to include games rated as “Steam Deck Playable,” and it will add frame rate variance to the graph to indicate frame rate stability. Valve also provides developers with other Deck Verified data gathered by surveying users who have spent more than 10 minutes in a game. Presumably, features like these will eventually be available for the upcoming Steam Machine and Steam Frame, too.