Does Avatar Frontiers of Pandora run on Steam Deck?

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is finally open for exploration on Steam Deck, but its experience on the go has its own world of problems.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has been available on handhelds since its release in 2023. However, its experience running on Ubisoft’s gaming platform wasn’t ideal for playing on the Steam Deck. Since then, the action-adventure based on James Cameron’s record-breaking films has broken free of its Ubisoft Connect exclusivity.

Now, PC players who prefer Steam over Ubisoft’s gaming platform can finally explore the world of Pandora in a whole new way. However, there may still be a long adventure ahead before Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora runs on Steam Deck.

Can you play Avatar Frontiers of Pandora on Steam Deck?

Avatar Frontiers of Pandora is not playable on Steam Deck and crashes upon startup when playing it natively on the handheld.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora hasn’t yet received a playable or fully verified status by Valve, but that’s not surprising. Since the game launched on Steam, it is unplayable on the Steam Deck in its current state.

Ubisoft

According to GamingOnLinux, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is not compatible with the Steam Deck. When testing the game while running Proton 9, or Proton Experimental, the game will not start up. If the game did load, it would run below 30 FPS, similar to reports of its previous Ubisoft Connect experience.

While we haven’t been able to test this out for ourselves, Steam Deck Gaming ran into the same issues, explaining on X/Twitter that the game “is more broken than the Ubisoft version on the Steam Deck.”

It’s not known why Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora struggles on the Steam Deck. The game was developed in the Snowdrop game engine, similar to other Ubisoft titles like South Park: The Fractured But Whole and Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. Currently, The Division 2 is officially playable on the Steam Deck, despite also being an equally graphically intensive game.

However, Frontiers of Pandora is a RAM-hungry game, demanding double that of Tom Clancy’s The Division 2’s 8GB memory requirement. Its performance issues aren’t exclusive to the Steam Deck either, with it receiving multiple mixed reviews on Steam referencing its performance problems on PC.

Sadly, unlike the Kingdom Hearts Steam versions, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora hasn’t solved its previous handheld gaming woes. As a result, we recommend waiting for future stability patches in hopes it becomes better optimized for playing on Steam Deck.

Avatar Frontiers of Pandora demands 90GB of install space for your Steam Deck. While it could be worse, that’s still a massive chunk of storage to set aside on your handheld, if you can get the game to run.

Picking up one of the best microSD cards will help ensure you have plenty of storage for Avatar Frontiers of Pandora or any Steam Deck game you want to play – especially if you haven’t yet picked up the 1TB OLED or upgraded the SSD.