How DOOM: The Dark Ages Runs on the Steam Deck - Steam Deck HQ (2025)

Opinion

May 11, 2025

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DOOM: The Dark Ages is a fantastic game, and I had a blast with it. In my review, I went over how much I loved the step backwards into horizontal movement, while introducing new mechanics like the shield and parrying. It's still as gruesome and gory as ever, but it did have some trouble on the Steam Deck. Launching it would lead to an error before getting to the main menu, leaving us unable to test it. However, Valve has come in clutch and pushed out a small preview update yesterday to fix this issue, so I jumped on it and decided to test the game on the Steam Deck, but it only confirmed the theories I had before.

Yesterday, before the update was released, I wrote an article and made a video showing how DOOM: The Dark Ages runs on the ROG Ally, ROG Ally X, and AYANEO 3. I wanted to see what it would be like to play the game on other, more powerful handhelds, and it could barely run on the base ROG Ally. At the time, I hypothesized that performance would be similar and worse on the Steam Deck, and while I did hope I would be wrong, I was unfortunately very correct.

To make sure I was testing with the best performance possible, I made sure to use SteamOS 3.7.6 Preview (for the patch to actually make the game launch), and the Bleeding-Edge beta for Proton Experimental. I chose this to use the latest version of the branch with the most updates on it. I did also test with the latest Proton GE layer (9-27), but the results were generally the same.

Trying to play the first chapter at XeSS Quality Mode and low-quality presets at 1280x720 resolution was a nightmare. This is a more linear level, and I wanted to test with the same settings I used for the other handhelds. As soon as enemies came on screen, my framerate dropped into the low 20s, and it could barely stick to 30 otherwise.

From there, I went to The Siege Part 1, one of the more demanding chapters that represent the more open-area levels. The performance there was understandably even worse, and the only way to get to 30 FPS at all was by turning the resolution down to 960x540. This makes the game extremely blurry and pixelated, not to mention it still had drops into the mid-20s every now and then.

And for those thinking Frame Generation may come to save the day, it doesn't. It won't work correctly with the in-game option, which cuts the framerate in half and makes it even more pixelated. I even tried using the Decky Framegen plugin to inject frame generation to see if it would work that way, but it wouldn't recognize it.

So, when all is said and done, it's not going to be a good time on the Steam Deck. It's nice that we can boot the game and confirm it for ourselves, but it isn't going to be playable. It's possible there will be patches later on, similar to what Nixxes Software did with Spider-Man 2 or MachineGames did with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, but we will have to wait and see for ourselves. However, I would not count on it, and I think it's safer to assume that your performance now is what you will be getting.

DOOM: The Dark Ages can be pre-purchased for $69.99 ahead of its May 14th release. You can also get it over on Fanatical for $58.09 if you want to save some money.

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