Is Palworld on Steam Deck?

Rosalie Newcombe
A screenshot for the Palworld Steam page, on the screen of a Steam Deck OLED.

With the monster-catching, survival, and crafting game coming to PC, Steam Deck owners may be wondering if it’s possible to enjoy Palworld on the go. So, here’s what we know.

There’s no mistaking that Palworld takes inspiration from the Pokemon franchise. While Pokemon itself has spun into a massive money-making machine, it had humble beginnings on a gaming handheld. To this day, the mainline Pokemon games continue to sell thousands of copies on the Nintendo Switch.

With that in mind, it seems only fitting that you may want to play Palworld on the Steam Deck, so you can battle amongst the Pokemon-inspired creatures on the go. With the game in early access, it hasn’t yet gone through Valve’s verification process, but things are looking good for reliving those childhood memories with the upcoming monster-hunting, survival, and crafting game.

So here’s everything we know about whether or not Palworld is available on Steam Deck.

Can you play Palworld on Steam Deck?

Palworld Paldeck 50 Jetragon

Palworld is playable on the Steam Deck, however the game hasn’t yet been checked for compatibility by Valve officially.

YouTube channel Arekkz Gaming shared their experiences with the early access version of Palworld. Within a recent video, they iterated that Palworld was “very easy” to play on the Valve handheld, and it was “basically pick up and play.” While they didn’t get into finer details surrounding how it coped with the FPS, according to the YouTuber the “performance was very good” on the Steam Deck.

With the game still in early access, and not available on PC until January 19, it still hasn’t received a compatibility commendation from Valve. This is fairly common for new Steam releases, with many games not receiving a ‘verified’ or ‘playable’ status until days after launch.

Developer Pocketpair has also not made any official announcements on the game’s compatibility with the Steam Deck. However, with it being only days away from the launch of Palworld, it won’t be long until we can catch ‘pals’ for ourselves and put it to the test on the handheld.

The Palworld system requirements call for 40GB of install space, which is pretty easy-going by today’s standards. Regardless, if you’re struggling to make room, picking up one of the best microSD cards for Steam Deck will provide your Deck with more of that precious storage space.