Baldur’s Gate 3 was released on Aug. 3 and has immediately become the talk of the town. Though it’s slated to release for PlayStation 5 and Mac in September, the game is currently a PC exclusive. This label no longer means that you have to stay planted at your desk to enjoy a game, however. This has Baldur’s Gate fans eager to know if the newest installment will be available on Valve’s Steam Deck.
The Steam Deck is a portable gaming device from Valve, designed to allow players to take their Steam library with them on the go. Despite being completely and conveniently portable, the Steam Deck still boasts some impressive dimensions and specs. No matter how impressive a portable device is, however, developers are still not at the point where portable devices are able to compete with stationary rigs. This means that not every game is available for play on the Steam Deck.
Can Baldur’s Gate 3 be played on Steam Deck?
On-the-go gamers can rejoice. Despite a download size of over 100 gigabytes, Baldur’s Gate 3 is available on Steam Deck. This means you can take the rich fantasy world of Baldur’s Gate with you where ever you go. But this game will require a bit of tweaking for it to run optimally on Steam Deck. In the end, though, it will be well worth it.
Optimal Steam Deck settings for Baldur’s Gate 3
The built-in SteamOS on a Steam Deck doesn’t function or launch games in exactly the same way as Steam does on a Windows PC, and this leads to some limitations. When first launching the game on Steam Deck, players will want to select to launch the game via DX11, as Vulcan APIs seem to cause extreme stuttering and FPS issues when implemented on Steam Deck. Selecting DX11 alone won’t optimize the game, either.
Even after launching Baldur’s Gate 3 with DX11, players may experience severe performance issues if the correct in-game settings aren’t selected to account for the relative lack of computing power in handheld devices. Unfortunately, it seems that achieving 60 FPS isn’t possible at the moment on Steam Deck, but that doesn’t mean the game can’t run smoothly. Implementing an FPS cap at 30 FPS will help avoid any stuttering or screen tearing. Keeping the overall quality preset at “medium” or lower seems to be the best option for consistent performance. Specific quality options for things like shadows, clouds, and fog don’t seem to have as drastic of an effect on performance, so long as they are not all on medium or higher.
Essentially, beggars cannot be choosers. Baldur’s Gate 3 can be played smoothly and reliably on Steam Deck, as long as one accepts the limitations of a portable system and doesn’t try to force the console to look as breathtaking as a super-powered PC does.
