Can I play ARC Raiders on Steam Deck?
Can I play ARC Raiders on Steam Deck? There’s a before and after ARC Raiders. Once you get a taste of scavenging in Buried City or Spaceport, there’s no going back. Embark Studios’ extraction shooter is on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC, but what about handheld consoles like the Steam Deck or ROG Ally? Let’s get you ready to loot and bring home the goods to Scrappy.
Of course, before ARC Raiders takes up all your time, we’re fans of Embark Studios’ underrated shooter The Finals – one of the best FPS games around. You can use our The Finals Steam Deck guide to get up and running in the arena.
Can I play ARC Raiders on Steam Deck?
Yes, you can play ARC Raiders on Steam Deck. Although Embark Studios has yet to drop more details about the game on Steam Deck, we know first-hand from experience and speaking to the studio that ARC Raiders works on Valve’s handheld. Initial builds of the game, such as Tech Test 2, were quite harsh on handheld PC hardware. In our ARC Raiders preview, we managed to get decent performance on the ROG Ally Z1e, but the Steam Deck suffered noticeably.
Luckily, the recent ARC Raiders Server Slam is doing away with most of those issues, as performance is better than ever thanks to recent optimizations. During our ARC Raiders interview with design director Virgil Watkins, we asked him about the game’s portable console performance.
While other consoles, such as the ROG Xbox Ally or Lenovo Legion S, aren’t necessarily a focus, he says that “I think from the majority of the game development, handheld PCs were far more niche, [but] I think the Steam Deck was kind of the main one. Any affordance we applied to console, certainly for input and things like that, of course, has a pretty strong correlation to how it plays out on those handhelds.”
Watkins adds that “obviously the market there is growing, so we’ll keep looking at that. And we’re pretty pleased, we deliberately target a pretty low set of hardware for the minimum specs. So it’s really nice that that has kind of lined up with where these handhelds are coming out, where they can run the game.”
Is ARC Raiders Steam Deck verified?
No, ARC Raiders is not Steam Deck verified. Right now, the game is ‘unsupported’ on the Steam Marketplace, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work on the Steam Deck. Embark Studios likely needs to address a few things, like in-game text and general performance, before Steam deems it worthy of verification. However, you can still purchase the game and start playing. We recommend using the ‘Proton Experimental’ preset before booting it up, for added stability.
What are the best ARC Raiders settings on Steam Deck?
If you’re wondering what the best settings are for ARC Raiders on the Steam Deck, we can point you in the right direction. Of course, as Valve’s console is a few years old, you won’t be able to match high-end desktop setups when it comes to fidelity or exceeding massive framerates in the 100s. Yet, if you’re willing to sacrifice some of those aspects, you’ll find ARC Raiders well enough on the Steam Deck with these settings:
- Window Mode – Borderless Fullscreen
- Display Resolution – 1280×800
- VSync – Disabled
- Frame Rate Limit – Unlimited
- Upscaled Resolution – 100%
- Resolution Scaling Method – XESS
- Render Resolution Scale Mode – Quality
- Field of View – your preference, but lower values perform better
- NVIDIA RTX Global Illumination – Static
- Overall Quality Level – Low
- View Distance – Low
- Anti-aliasing – Low
- Shadows – Low
- Post-processing – Low
- Textures – Low
- Effects – Low
- Reflections – Low
- Foliage – Low
- Global Illumination Resolution – Low
- In-Game Performance Overlay – your preference
- Idle Energy Saving – Enabled
- Inactive Window Energy Saving – Enabled
With these settings, you can expect your frame rate to land between 40 and 60fps, depending on what area you’re in and how intense the action is in the moment.
How do I install ARC Raiders on Steam Deck?
You can install ARC Raiders on your Steam Deck by heading to the Steam Marketplace, buying and adding the game to your library, and then accepting the download prompt. You need at least 30 GB of storage space. If you need more Steam Deck storage, check out our WD Black SSN07M review.
That’s all you need to know about playing ARC Raiders on your Steam Deck. Want more of the best Steam Deck games to play? You can check out our Black Ops 6 Steam Deck, Fortnite Steam Deck, or GTA 5 Steam Deck guides.
