Steam Machine and Steam Deck Updates: New Client, SteamOS Beta, and Proton GE 11.1 Explained

As Valve improves performance and makes more hardware compatible, Steam Deck and SteamOS continue to receive regular updates. Around the same time, a newly verified title, a client update partly aimed at the Steam Machine, a SteamOS beta focused on improving graphics drivers, and two different Proton updates all came out.

This gave users many reasons to check their settings and update their systems. Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has received verified status on Steam Deck ahead of its July 9 launch, making it officially supported on the handheld from day one.

The verified system does not always reflect a fully polished experience in practice, so testing the game directly remains the most reliable way to confirm how well it actually runs.

Steam Deck Client Update Brings Steam Machine Compatibility Fixes

A new Steam Deck client update has arrived, and much of it focuses on Steam Machine compatibility rather than the Deck itself. The game launch progress screen now displays a note whenever a minimum game resolution setting results in the game running below the display's native resolution, addressing an issue previously flagged by reviewers.

The update also relocates the maximum game resolution setting from Settings, Display, Advanced to Settings, Display, and makes additional adjustments to how it is handled. A new SteamOS beta update has also been released, following a previous major SteamOS update.

This beta includes an update to the Mesa graphics drivers, which should help improve performance, along with improvements to VRAM management that are also expected to help performance. Several additional fixes are included. The previous SteamOS update delivered measurable improvements in certain games, so this beta is worth testing directly to see whether it produces similar gains.

Proton experimental update fixes crashes and controller Support issues.

Proton GE 11.1 has been released, bringing a set of features and fixes to improve how games run on Steam Deck. The update adds Discord bridge support and upscale support, and resolves video playback issues affecting several games. Anyone who has encountered video playback issues on Deck should find this update useful.

A new Proton Experimental update addresses several game-specific issues. It fixes Five from crashing on CPUs with hybrid-core configurations, improves controller support for Kingdom Come: Deliverance on desktop, and resolves Arc Raiders breaking on certain setups following a recent game update. The update also includes a set of regression fixes tied to Proton11.