Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the most-played games on Valve’s Steam DeckSteam Deck handheld. Following the game’s massive success on the brilliant portable gaming PC, the studio will try to bring its next big RPG Divinity to the system.
In a recent AMA, where Larian also confirmed it is now barring the use of Generative AI for concept art and writing, a developer explained that the studio will try and support Valve’s handheld if possible.
“We all love the Steam Deck!” Larian technical director Bert Bert van Semmertier said. “Since BG3 was one of the most played games on the platform, we will do our best to again release on the platform.”
In another comment, the technical director explained that Larian is “very conscious of the cost of hardware” right now as AI datacenters cause prices to skyrocket. The developer explained that “scalability of the game is very important to us” and, while “the game and engine are still in heavy development”, the team has “invested a lot of time and effort to have constant performance tracking of out game during production”.
While Steam Deck support will likely not be factored into the game’s eventual early access debut, we could expect support for the machine later in the game’s lifespan. On release, Baldur’s Gate 3 was not very performant on Valve’s machine, but later patches made the game far more playable on the system.
In recent months, Larian even released a native Steam Deck version of its award-winning RPG with improved memory management to increase performance. While we’ve seen other titles do this as well, such as Bloober Team’s Cronos: The New Dawn, Larian has poured significant effort into improving performance on the machine.
Of course, with the actual Divinity release date still not known, it may be many years until the game is playable at all, let alone on the current Steam Deck. However, with many developers using the handheld as a barometer of low-end hardware, especially with its specs so closely matching Nintendo Switch 2, it would be wise to continue keeping the handheld’s performance in mind when developing new titles.
