Steam Deck "Playable" Status Granted To The Elder Scrolls Online, But I Don't Know If I'd Want To Play There

I love my Steam Deck. I mean, I LOVE it. It's an incredible piece of hardware and I think future versions are really going to be even more amazing. I also love The Elder Scrolls Online. The MMORPG is one of my favorite games to go to when I just want to play through a small story bit or hit up some of my favorite dungeons in gaming.

You'd THINK today's news would be a match made in heaven for me. In some respects, maybe it could be, but in many, I am not looking forward to it...but I will give it a whirl.

The Elder Scrolls Online has achieved "Playable" status on Steam's handheld today. For those of you that don't know, Steam games come in one of 3 categories when it comes to their compatibility on the Steam Deck. "Verified" is the status you really want. "Verified" means you're good to go and likely won't have any issues at all playing the game in question. "Playable" is great, but it's slightly less desired. While Steam offers additional notes on a per game basis, when it comes to MMOs, "Playable" is usually a result of small fonts on menus or in chats, or issues with controller play in the game. "Unsupported" is pretty self-explanatory and doesn't apply here anyway, so we'll skip that one and the "Unknown" category, which isn't really a category, it's more of a "we don't know" label.

Becoming "Playable" is certainly a step in the right direction and The Elder Scrolls Online will be aiming at "Verified" status soon with a few more UI optimization updates.

That's where the game may lose me, though. This version of "Playable" comes with the usual small text warnings on the launcher and in game, and a call out that players need to turn on controller support once in game. That means upon first boot up, you'll be trying to enable things on a small touchscreen.

Maybe running dungeons on the go could be fun, but I have just never enjoyed playing MMOs on the Steam Deck. The Elder Scrolls Online is one of the more menu intensive MMOs out there, in my opinion. It's already a little clunky UI-wise on PC and even more so on consoles. On a Steam Deck? I don't know, man...that could be rough.

I'll report back after I've had some time to try it out though. Will you be trying out TESO on your Steam Deck?