Starfield is an action role-playing game set in a vast space opera universe. Create your own character and explore a galaxy of over 100 star systems, each with its own unique planets, moons, and space stations. Choose your own path, from becoming a space explorer to a powerful warrior or merchant.
Starfield Steam Deck Performance
I have CryoUtilities installed on my Deck to get the maximum performance.
In the main menu go to Accessibility and Turn On Large Menu Fonts. This increases the font size for smaller displays like the Steam Deck.
Steam Deck OS 3.4.9 fixes crashes on the Steam Deck, make sure to update.
We knew going into this game there would be a high chance this game would be too much for the Steam Deck to handle and we were right unfortunately. To get a some what 30fps experience on the Steam Deck in Starfield you need to lower all the settings and enable FSR. Even with everything at it’s lowest it doesn’t stop the game from dropping frames into the low 20’s especially in large populated cities and even crashing at times. The game is very CPU intensive so I’m not sure if a patch could help but we could only hope.
I would personally stay away from buying this strictly for the Steam Deck and try other methods to playing this on the Deck as mentioned below.
Graphic Settings
 | Settings |
Borderless Fullscreen | On |
Dynamic Resolution | On |
Render Resolution Scale | Lowest |
Shadow Quality | Low |
Indirect Lighting | Low |
Reflections | Low |
Particle Quality | Low |
Volumetric Lighting | Low |
Crowd Density | Low |
Motion Blur | Low |
GTAO Quality | Low |
Grass Quality | Low |
Contact Shadows | Low |
VSync | On |
Upscaling | FSR 2 |
Enable VRS | On |
Enable Depth Of Field | Off |
Other Ways To Play This On The Steam Deck
If you really want to play this on your Steam Deck and get a more playable experience, you could always remote play with from your gaming PC to Steam Deck using Moonlight.
If you don’t have a gaming PC, you could setup Xbox Cloud Gaming on your Steam Deck and stream the game from Microsoft’s data centers. However, Cloud Gaming for Starfield launches on September 6 and is not available during the Early Access.
