Valve updated Steam on November 10, adding a feature that displays the actual in-game frame rates for Steam Deck titles. Thousands of games already have average frame rates and distribution charts available, allowing players to review aggregated performance under real-world conditions before purchasing or installing.
This data is derived from users' actual gameplay records, not target values provided by developers, and differs from Steam's existing compatibility ratings. For example, if a page shows an average of 45 FPS, it means the system has aggregated and calculated data collected during actual gameplay.
To prevent averages from masking frame rate fluctuations, Steam has also added a frame rate distribution histogram showing the percentage of data in each frame rate range. Even if two games both achieve an average of 60 FPS, one might remain steadily near 60 FPS, while the other could fluctuate significantly between 30 and 90 FPS.
Valve stated that support will continue to expand as more data is accumulated, with plans to extend similar data displays to other devices in the future. The current announcement does not specify sampling periods, device power settings, graphics configurations, or how outliers are handled, so these aggregated figures should be used as performance references and do not guarantee identical results on every device.