Valve is making it easier for Steam Deck owners to know what they’re getting into before buying a game, with a new Steam Store feature showing real-world frame rates from other players.

Starting 10 November, Steam Deck users can check a game’s average frames per second (FPS) directly from its store listing, giving them a better idea of how smoothly it actually runs on the handheld. It’s a useful addition to Valve’s existing compatibility ratings, which tell you whether a game works on the Steam Deck but don’t necessarily reveal how well it performs.

The new information appears under Steam Deck Compatibility > Learn more on supported store pages, covering games labelled Verified, Playable and even Unsupported. According to Valve’s announcement, performance figures are already available for thousands of titles, with more being added as enough player data becomes available.

Rather than relying on a fixed set of benchmark tests, Valve is gathering anonymised frame-rate information from Steam Deck owners who have opted into sharing their performance statistics. This means the figures reflect how games run in everyday use, including the different settings and conditions players encounter.

There’s also an expandable graph showing how often a game runs at different frame rates. That’s arguably more useful than the average alone, since a game reporting 40fps might sound perfectly playable until you discover it regularly drops well below that figure. Having both measurements should make it easier to spot titles that look fine on paper but struggle to deliver consistent performance.

It’s a particularly welcome improvement to the Steam Deck Verified system. A green tick has never guaranteed a consistently smooth experience, while some games marked Unsupported can still run reasonably well with a few adjustments. The new figures give players something more concrete to work with, rather than having to search through reviews and community discussions before making a purchase.

There are some limitations, though. Valve only collects results from devices using their default frame-rate limits, which are 60fps for the Steam Deck LCD and 90fps for the OLED model. Individual graphics settings aren’t accounted for either, so the numbers shouldn’t be treated as precise benchmarks or a guarantee of what every player will experience.

For now, the performance figures can be viewed through Steam Store pages, while seeing them in your Steam Library requires the Steam Client Beta. Valve is also inviting desktop beta users to share anonymised performance data, suggesting the feature could eventually help PC gamers compare performance across a much wider range of hardware.

For Steam Deck owners, though, the immediate benefit is simple: fewer surprises after hitting the buy button. Knowing whether a game runs comfortably or spends much of its time struggling should make Valve’s compatibility labels considerably more useful.