Pricing and performance rumors about the Steam Machine are the talk of the town (some potentially bad news on that later), but developers have other concerns. Game verification can be a bit tricky on the Steam Deck, as even “Verified” games can experience some performance issues. However, while talking with GameDeveloper.com, designer Lawrence Yang confirmed that Deck Verified titles auto-qualify for the Steam Machine.
Of course, this is by no means an indicator of what level of performance we can expect. Valve itself says that with upscaling, you can run any game at up to 4K 60 FPS. They haven’t mentioned frame generation, image quality, graphical settings, or other aspects in that claim. The specs alone put it close to a modern mid-range PC, and while I expect it to play virtually any game at 1440p with ease, native 4K with Ultra settings is a battle the Steam Machine likely won’t win.
What “Fewer Constraints” Means For Developers
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The “Verified” badge is more than just a checkmark for the Steam Deck and Steam Machine — it’s marketing rocket fuel. Many developers and publishers flaunt “Deck Verified” on old titles to generate sales and boost visibility for the handheld platform. The Steam Machine will likely follow suit.
It’s also important to mention here that Proton and Linux have come a long way. For those unfamiliar, Valve’s Steam Machine and Steam Deck run on Linux. They use Proton as the compatibility layer so that Windows games run seamlessly on the Linux-based SteamOS. Massive titles such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring are Steam Deck verified, meaning they’re playable without any tweaks out of the box. With Proton improving all the time (it’s partially an open-source project), development workloads are getting easier for the platform.
With that said, anti-cheat will stay a thorn in the side of Valve. Kernel-level systems like Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) or BattlEye often clash with Proton/Linux, blocking online play even if offline runs fine. This means that titles like EA Sports FC 26 or Madden 26 are officially unsupported.
Finally, let’s talk about that price rumor. As pointed out by Videocardz.com, two Czech retailers “leaked” the price of the Steam Machine with store listings. From our research (these are rumors, so take it with a grain of salt), these prices are marked up a bit in the country. However, it roughly translates to $950 for the 512GB and $1070 for the 2TB model.
Valve already confirmed that the Steam Machine would not align with console pricing, but we hope these prices are heavily marked up. A nearly $1000 PC/console hybrid with these specs will be a bit of a tough sell for most people.
