Steam Deck users may get banned for playing certain popular games

Although Steam Deck is a very useful handheld gaming device made by Valve, the truth is that every Steam game won’t necessarily work on Steam Deck. This also includes a few very popular games, such as Destiny 2. 

Destiny 2 developers recently announced that Destiny 2 is not available on Steam Deck. Anyone trying to bypass the restrictions and play the game through the Steam Deck’s Steam OS or Proton will receive a ban. This is also not the only popular game that has issued this threat. Fortnite developers, Epic Games, have announced that they won’t be releasing a Fortnite version for the Steam Deck.

However, what could the reason be behind this threat? Although Bungie has received questions about why they won’t allow players to play Destiny 2 on Steam Deck, the developers are yet to respond to the question. There’s also no known technical reason why this shouldn’t be possible. Steam Deck’s AMD-based hardware should be more than sufficient to run the game even if it isn’t fully optimized. 

Some players of Destiny 2 theorize that Bungie isn’t allowing the game on Steam Deck has more to do with the anti-cheat system. Launching Destiny 2 on Steam OS will make it challenging, if not impossible, to implement the game’s multiplayer anti-cheat systems.

There are workarounds for this ban. You won’t receive a ban if you play Destiny 2 on the Steam Deck if you have Windows OS installed on the device and access the game through the regular Steam Windows platform. Alternatively, you can also use streaming via GeForce Now and Stadia on the Steam Deck. Although, both these options might have a heavy impact on the performance and battery life of your Steam Deck.

While the anti-cheat feature’s functionality may be a good reason, other games use Steam as a distribution system without having this issue. We are eager to see if this will remain the case for Destiny 2 or if the developers might surprise us by allowing the game on Steam Deck in the future.