Steam Machine and Steam Frame: Valve names requirements for Verified program

With the upcoming Steam Machine and Steam Frame, Valve is introducing two new categories for the Verified program: Steam Machine Verified and Steam Frame Verified. Similar to the Steam Deck, the seal of approval is intended to show players which titles work on the respective devices without problems.

Games must run stably on the Steam Machine at 1920 × 1080 pixels and 30 frames per second to receive the Machine Verified seal, Valve explained during a presentation at the GDC developer conference. For the Steam Deck, Valve requires games to support a resolution of 1280 × 720/800 and does not specify a frame rate. The higher requirements for the Steam Machine are due to the mini-PC's stronger performance, which Valve says is six times faster than the Steam Deck. Therefore, all games with the Deck Verified seal will automatically receive a Machine Verified seal – but not vice versa.

Games that do not run under SteamOS for compatibility reasons and are therefore not supported on the Steam Deck will receive the same rating on the Steam Machine, as it also uses SteamOS. If the lack of Steam Deck support for certain games is due to the handheld's performance, Valve will re-test the titles for the significantly more powerful Steam Machine.

Another important requirement for the Machine Verified seal is full controller support. Games must be operable without a mouse or keyboard, just like on the Steam Deck. If this is not the case, they will only receive the “Playable” rating. Valve will not test whether texts and the user interface are readable. This would also be difficult, as users can use different monitors with the Steam Machine.

Steam Frame: Stable 90 frames are the minimum

The VR headset Steam Frame has even different requirements. As is well known, the device supports both classic Steam games and SteamVR titles. Both can be calculated locally on the device or rendered by a PC or the Steam Machine and then streamed to the VR headset.

If the games are streamed from a PC, there is no Verified rating, as the PC's performance, not the VR headset's performance, is decisive here. If a game runs well on the host PC, it will also run well on Steam Frame, says Valve.

In standalone operation of the VR headset, however, Valve's Verified requirements apply. For classic Steam games to receive the Frame Verified seal, they must run stably at 1280 × 720 pixels and 30 frames per second on the integrated ARM chip. For VR games, Valve does not specify a target resolution but requires stable 90 frames per second. This exceeds the minimum requirements of Quest headsets, which are 72 frames per second. However, Steam Frame also offers slightly more performance due to a faster chip and 16 instead of 8 GB of RAM, which means it should not be a major problem for developers in most cases to optimize their existing VR games for the higher frame rate. In the VR industry, 90 Hertz is often considered a benchmark for a particularly smooth experience that reduces the risk of motion sickness.

For the Frame Verified seal, all titles must be fully playable with the Steam Frame controllers. These are a mix of VR controller and Steam Controller, but do not have trackpads. As with the Steam Deck, Valve checks the readability of the user interfaces.

When the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller, announced in November, will be released exactly is still open due to the ongoing chip shortage. Initially, the launch was planned for early 2026, later Valve mentioned the first half of 2026. In a more recent blog post, it was stated that Valve hoped for a delivery this year. However, Valve clarified shortly thereafter that the devices are still scheduled to be released this year.

(mack)