Assassin's Creed Shadows Will Be Steam Deck Compatible After All
Be an assassin on the go.
The next chapter in the Assassin’s Creed mythos is almost here. And it turns out players will be able to take the upcoming adventure across feudal Japan on the go if they have the hardware to do so.
Ubisoft Quebec confirmed on Twitter this week that Assassin’s Creed Shadows will be Steam Deck compatible at launch. Valve just needs to give the game the appropriate classification on its digital storefront. This confirmation comes just a few weeks after the developer told players Shadows would not be playable on Valve’s popular handheld PC.
It seems that the extra month of development time has been put to good use. While the Steam Deck is just three years old, getting a brand new game as visually impressive as Shadows running on such lower-end hardware is a sign of an accessible title that will run across a wide spectrum of devices. And we can assume that more powerful handhelds, such as the Lenovo Legion Go or any of the ASUS ROG Allys, should have no problem running the latest Ubisoft title.
While this is great for those who want to switch between their desktop and handheld devices, as Shadows supports Cloud saves across all platforms, it’s also the latest example of a developer noting how important the portable gaming market has become. As we’ve seen with recent titles like Dragon Age: The Veilguard, making sure your game can run across all devices doesn’t mean sacrificing fidelity. All it does is ensure the maximum amount of players can buy and enjoy your game regardless of what they own.
In an age where more and more games launch in a troubled state on PC, developing for a widely adopted lowest common denominator is much preferred to waiting for hot fixes and patches to roll out. It’s clearly a strategy more and more developers and hardware manufacturers are coming to terms with. As recently as this week, it’s been rumored that Xbox is looking to launch a handheld as soon as this year. And PlayStation is actively working on a portable following the unexpected success of the PlayStation Portal.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a gorgeous game, and the fact that it will run on Steam Deck suggests it’ll perform well on most mid-range to higher end PCs.
However you decide to play the new Assassin’s Creed, the upside is you won’t have to spend nearly as long reaching the main story’s epic conclusion. Earlier this month, the developer confirmed that the game’s main quest should take players somewhere around 30 to 40 hours to complete. That’s a long shot from the more than 100 hours it took to get to the end of the last mainline game in the series. Much of that streamlining comes from some smart gameplay options provided to the player right from the start.
