What you need to know
- Forza Motorsport is currently available in early access on PC and Xbox Series X|S consoles.
- The PC version is available on Steam, but it’s not looking good for anyone who wants to play on the Steam Deck.
- ProtonDB currently shows the game as “borked” with players so far unable to get it working on the Steam Deck or on desktop Linux.
The reception so far for the rebooted Forza Motorsport has been pretty good from both press and players alike. But if you’re looking to play it on the Steam Deck then right now there’s going to be a very different response.
In our own Forza Motorsport review, Zachary Boddy gave it a healthy 4 out of 5 and praised the upgraded core experience. There have been more issues present in early access on PC than on Xbox, but in the case of the Steam Deck, support seems to be a big fat no right now.
We haven’t been able to test first hand since our review codes were for Xbox and PC through the Microsoft Store. However, the community has started taking to ProtonDB to highlight that trying to get the game running on the Deck is yielding nothing but failure.
Here are some of the community comments:
“Game crashes instantly upon pressing play 🙁 no tinkering of any kind + early access release so maybe this’ll change in the future.”
“The game doesn’t launch on any of my devices. It seems to be a general problem, unrelated to a specific hardware configuration.”
“Game doesn’t launch. Initial loading box appears for couple of seconds and then application closes without any error message.”
Of course, for Microsoft, the Steam Deck is unlikely to be a huge priority, but of the handheld gaming PCs out there right now it’s the most important one to have support for. Perhaps it’s an issue Valve can fix in Proton, perhaps Microsoft needs to do the work, at the minute it’s unclear.
Forza Horizon 4 and 5 are both playable on the Steam Deck, albeit sometimes with some tinkering required to get the best experience. It gives us hope that Forza Motorsport might work on the Steam Deck at some point down the road, but if you were planning to buy it to play on your handheld, maybe don’t part with any cash just yet.
