Will ‘Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Be Playable On Steam Deck?

For PC gamers, there’s a lot of positive news surrounding Assassin’s Creed Shadows, including the fact that Ubisoft is ditching exclusivity with Epic Games and launching Day 1 on Steam. But sadly, despite the game being capable of running on an 8-year-old graphics card, Assassin’s Creed Shadows won’t be compatible with Steam Deck.

This isn’t down to some compatibility conflict with the SteamOS-powered Steam Deck (though it’s worth mentioning AC Shadows will include Denuvo DRM). The bad news comes directly from Pierre F, Technology Director on Assassin’s Creed Shadows, who answered a fan’s question in a recently published Tech Q&A.

Ubisoft answered more than a dozen technical questions about Assassin’s Creed Shadows on PC, including this one: "Will the game be Steam Deck certified at launch?”

“At launch, the game will not be compatible with Steam Deck, due to the fact it is below our minimum specs for PC," Pierre F says.

The bare minimum specs required for PC to achieve 30FPS at 1080p are an Nvidia GTX 1070 8GB GPU/AMD Radeon RX 5700 GPU, and an Intel Core i7 8700K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU.

The newest component on that list is about 6 years old, with the Nvidia GTX 1070 being more than 8 years old. So it’s more than a little disheartening that some general level of handheld optimization couldn’t be achieved by Ubisoft – especially given the increasing popularity of the Steam Deck.

After all, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has steeper PC requirements, but does run at a mostly stable 30FPS on Steam Deck and achieved Valve’s coveted “Verified” badge.

Then again, the company experienced mass layoffs in 2024, and with AC Shadows already being delayed twice, the teams might simply be stretched to their limits.

But Ubisoft’s carefully phrased reply leads me to believe there’s an outside chance it will work on optimizing for handhelds like Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and the new Legion Go S post-launch. Beyond that, we could even see some wizardry from the likes of Valve or GloriousEggroll (the developer behind Proton-GE). I’ll definitely keep an eye on it.

Still, I feel like I’m increasingly writing about the latest AAA game either running poorly on Steam Deck, or not running at all.

I’m curious to see if Assassin’s Creed Shadows ends up playable on systems more powerful than Steam Deck, like the Legion Go and ROG Ally X. Perhaps even the MSI Claw AI 8+, since Intel is Ubisofts technology partner on this launch, and the latest MSI handheld sports Lunar Lake. We’ll find out when the game launches on March 20, 2025.

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