Steam Now Shows Average Framerates for Steam Deck Games: Where to Find Them and How It Works
Valve now shows real average framerates from Steam Deck players on store pages, with a histogram that reveals stutter. Where to see it and how to opt out.
Valve has started showing the average framerate players actually get in games on Steam Deck. The data, added in an update on 9 November, comes from Deck owners who opted in to sharing anonymous performance figures, and it's already available for thousands of games.
Valve says the Verified rating doesn't always match what players consider acceptable: a game marked Unsupported may be fine for some people, while a Verified game may not hit the framerate others want. The new numbers are meant to fill that gap before you buy.
Where to find it
On a game's Steam Store page, go to Steam Deck Compatibility and select Learn more. The data is also in your Steam Library if you're on the Steam Client Beta. It covers games that have been tested for Deck compatibility, whether they're rated Verified, Playable or Unsupported.
An expandable view adds a histogram showing the percentage of samples at each framerate. It's the useful part if you care about stutter: small columns at the low end show how often players run into hitches.
How to read the numbers
- Default settings only: the figures only include Decks using the default frame limit, 90fps on Steam Deck OLED and 60fps on the LCD model. Valve doesn't account for custom in-game graphics settings, but says the results still cluster in fairly narrow ranges.
- Gaps in the histogram: a big gap between 90 and 45 usually comes from VSync. When a game can't hold the display's refresh rate, its frames alternate between 90 and 45fps. A game capped at 60fps on a Deck OLED set to 90Hz does this too.
How to opt in or out
Steam prompts you in your Library. You can change it at any time under Steam Account Settings > Data & Browsing > Anonymous Game Framerate Data. Valve says a majority of Steam Deck players have opted in.
Next: other devices
Valve calls this "a stepping stone" toward framerate data for more devices. It started with Steam Deck because every unit has the same hardware, which makes the figures easier to read. Steam's desktop client is now also asking players to share anonymous framerate data. For now that prompt is limited to the Steam Client Beta, and Valve says it will reach everyone in the future.
