Valve's highly anticipated Steam Deck is finally in the hands of players, and so far it seems the handheld is a big success for the company. However, as expected, some games are unfortunately incompatible due to anti-cheat, including the popular Halo Infinite.
Released last year, Halo Infinite is the latest entry in the iconic Halo series and was generally well-received by fans. The free-to-play multiplayer component is a huge draw, naturally including measures against players cheating to gain unfair advantages.
In a list shared on Steam, Xbox Game Studios outlines which games are currently supported on Steam Deck. The list is split into three categories, with each representing the level of playability: Verified games which are known to work, Playable games that may have some issues, and Unsupported games that will not run at all. Unfortunately, both Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Halo Infinite are in the Unsupported category, alongside Microsoft Flight Simulator X and Gears 5.
Multiplayer games on Steam Deck are a special case, since running through a compatibility layer to work on a different OS is something that games are not generally designed to do. The Proton compatibility system working as well as it does is a major technical achievement reached thanks to both Valve and the open-source WINE project Proton is adapted from, but given the nature of games from different studios running on different engines, it would be unreasonable to expect perfection. Still, though, whether developers decide to support the Steam Deck and Linux as a whole depends on how well the platform performs long-term.
The Steam Deck, while not a perfect platform, could be the start of a bright future for wrestling away control from Windows as the prime gaming platform. With most developers including Microsoft-owned ones mainly targeting the Microsoft DirectX graphics interface for games, other platforms like MacOS and Linux are left with much smaller libraries of games to play. The popularity of the Proton compatibility layer used on Steam Deck combined with its free availability on any compatible Linux version makes Linux a much more viable platform for gaming and could result in more developers actively targeting the platform. Unfortunately, if big releases like Halo Infinite are unsupported, that could hinder the success of both Linux as a gaming platform and of the Steam Deck.
While it is disappointing that the Halo games will not run on Steam Deck, this may not be the case forever. A short text summary explaining the list is included in the post and states that "some titles may take longer" to become supported, so it is possible that any or all of the unsupported games could become playable eventually.
Halo Infinite is available now for PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Xbox Game Studios
