RPS presents Steam Deck Academy: a grand repository of Steam Deck knowledge, made simple
This’ll learn ya
Welcome to Steam Deck Academy, where we take the microfibre cloth of understanding and wipe away the smudgy touchscreen fingerprints of handheld gaming ignorance. Here, eager students – that’s you, I’m assuming – can feast their minds on all the Steam Deck guides, explainers, and investigations that we’ve produced, as well as further instructive pieces to come.
This project was born from both a belief and a concern. The belief is that the Steam Deck is very much a PC, and like all PCs, it hides its secrets well. It's brimming with possibilities - to play more games, to install new apps, or to fine-tune how it runs - but with only a cursory built-in tutorial, the Deck can be frustratingly opaque on how you can actually seize them. I’ve always wanted RPS’s hardware coverage to feel useful, including to readers without much interest in the techy side of PC gaming, and helping you to get the most out of a Steam Deck (or Steam Deck OLED) fits right into that.
The concern is that while we already have a bunch of Deck-focused guides and articles on the site, they’re all kind of just... dotted about, not really connected to one another beyond a few embedded links. Steam Deck Academy aims to fix that, by acting as a one-stop library for all the practical advice and step-by-step guides we have to give, while also marking them as distinct from any bloggier or longer-form pieces (like our Steam Deck OLED discussion or interviews with Valve). Everyone wins, as does the very concept of knowledge.
Read on, then, for all our Steam Deck lessons, and look out for more to be added in the future. Tuition is free, though I can’t promise cheaper lager in the union bar.
How-to guides
- How to enable Desktop Mode on the Steam Deck
- How to install Decky Loader on the Steam Deck
- How to install and use Lutris on the Steam Deck
- How to install Battle.net on the Steam Deck
- How to install the Epic Games Launcher on the Steam Deck
- How to play Game Pass games on the Steam Deck
- How to set the Steam Deck’s lock screen
- How to install Proton GE on the Steam Deck
- How to take screenshots on the Steam Deck
- How to record game clips on the Steam Deck
- How to use Steam Remote Play on the Steam Deck
- How to connect a Steam Deck to a TV
- How to install a new SSD on the Steam Deck
- How to format a microSD card on the Steam Deck
- How to calibrate and customise gyro controls on the Steam Deck
- How to use the performance overlay on the Steam Deck
- How to install Zenless Zone Zero on the Steam Deck
Hardware reviews and accessory guides
- Steam Deck review
- Steam Deck OLED review
- The best microSD cards for the Steam Deck
- The best Steam Deck cases
- The best Steam Deck docks
- The best Steam Deck accessories
- The best SSDs for gaming
Deep dives and tests
- The Steam Deck battery life guide
- Streaming games on the Steam Deck: GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming tested
- Doom Eternal’s ray tracing on Steam Deck tested
- How is the Steam Deck as a desktop PC?
Game performance reports and settings guides
- Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
- Baldur’s Gate III
- Dead Island 2
- Dead Space remake
- Diablo IV
- Dragon Age: The Veilguard (New)
- Dragon's Dogma 2
- Elden Ring / Shadow of the Erdtree
- Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut
- God of War Ragnarök
- GTA Trilogy – Definitive Edition
- Hades 2 (early access)
- Helldivers 2
- Horizon Forbidden West
- Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
- Manor Lords (early access)
- Metaphor: ReFantazio (New)
- Palworld
- Redfall
- Nightingale (early access)
- Resident Evil 4 remake
- Spider-Man Remastered
- Starfield
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
- The First Descendent
- The Last of Us Part 1 (very important update here)
- Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection
- V Rising (early access)