Last month, Valve’s Steam Deck portable PC finally shipped to its first customers, and Destiny 2: The Witch Queen dropped too. Unfortunately, it’s not possible for Steam Deck owners to play the FPS game‘s massive expansion, as Bungie says Destiny is “not supported” – and those that try to force it to work may face a “game ban”.
The last couple of weeks saw some major gaming releases, including the long-awaited launch of Valve’s Steam Deck handheld, Destiny 2’s latest expansion, and Elden Ring. However, while FromSoftware’s Elden Ring is fully verified to work with Steam Deck, The Witch Queen and one of the best multiplayer games on PC is not.
According to developer Bungie’s updated guide to Destiny 2 on Steam, “Destiny 2 is not supported for play on the Steam Deck” due to the handheld using Proton. Unless users install Windows on Steam Deck instead – which currently doesn’t have the right drivers – players who try to load Destiny 2 “will be unable to enter the game and will be returned to their game library after a short time”. Furthermore, Bungie warns that “players who attempt to bypass Destiny 2 incompatibility will be met with a game ban”.
On the game’s Steam page, Valve confirms that Destiny 2 is “unsupported” due to the game’s anti-cheat software. Destiny 2 moved to BattlEye last year, which the Steamworks team recently said was “a simple process” to get games using this software working on Steam Deck. The BattlEye team itself previously stated Steam Deck support would be on an “opt-in” basis, so there may be other factors preventing Destiny 2 from running on Valve’s handheld.
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Thankfully, there’s still a way to make Destiny 2 Steam Deck compatibility a thing, but you’ll have to use the power of the cloud rather than Valve’s handheld innards.