Assassin’s Creed Shadows is finally out, being released for both PCs and consoles. In particular, the PC port also brings with support for Apple Silicon as well as the Steam Deck – with Ubisoft having secured the coveted Steam Deck verified badge ahead of its release.
However, this does come with more than a few caveats though, and the Steam Deck port isn’t exactly perfect, exhibiting locked down settings and the like. Regardless, you can find a general overview of Assassin’s Creed Shadows running on the Steam Deck in the sections below.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows runs surprisingly well on the Steam Deck
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is Steam Deck verified, players can expect the game to run reasonably well on Valve’s handheld gaming PC. The game launches and runs just fine with the Proton Experimental translation layer, exhibiting little to no graphical artifacts or visual slowdowns in the process.
However, Assassin’s Creed Shadows does use a Steam Deck specific preset to achieve the same – that is, a much lower preset when compared to the usual Very Low/Low settings on offer. All of this ensures that the Deck can maintain a smooth 30+ frames per second on average while running the game.
Naturally, this comes at the cost of visuals, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows looks a fair bit worse when compared to its console versions. That being said, Shadows doesn’t look all too terrible, and is actually playable.
The game also possesses a strange set of locked down, adjustable settings for the Deck. The tweaks offered here are minimal at best, and readers are recommended to use the default, out-of-the-box config for best results. XeSS might be useful for achieving a sharper image.
If tweaking the settings though, it is absolutely essential to disable ray tracing in order to achieve a 30+ frame rate. Frame generation is also recommended to leave disabled in order to reduce latency.
Overall, Shadows is most certainly playable on the Steam Deck.
