DayZ is a popular survival game that to this day still rakes in around 50 thousand players on Steam. Although the game is available on last gen consoles (PS4 and Xbox One), it is primarily dominated by PC. The game has a huge loyal player base and with so many of them moving to the Steam Deck they are wondering whether this game is even playable on the device.
DayZ is very much playable on the Steam Deck although the game is listed as Unsupported on the Steam Deck compatibility list. The game runs really well with performance even maintaining around 60fps on High graphics settings.
DayZ On The Steam Deck
According to the Steam Deck compatibility check, DayZ has been listed as Unsupported. However, you can play the game without many problems. The unsupported compatibility is either due to Steam Deck’s Linux-based OS’s conflict with some of the anti-cheat services or the game isn’t properly optimized for the handheld device.
The good news is, both these issues are apparently not present with DayZ on the Steam Deck. The anti-cheat that DayZ uses, BattlEye, is compatible with the Steam Deck and the developers must have opted in to make it work on this system. You can play this game online. As for the optimization, the game runs buttery smooth on the Steam Deck at 60fps even on High settings. Lowering the settings a bit will provide better fps stability and battery life.
The unsupported badge is probably there due to the teams at Valve and DayZ haven’t officially tested and optimized the game for the Steam Deck. The game has controller support on the PC as well which translates well to the handheld’s layout although the Steam Deck’s controller has more potential which can be further utilized by the developers.
Controls
As DayZ is not supported, there is no official controller layout for the Steam Deck. The game will either revert you to default controls with the touchpads or the controller layout of a typical PC controller. However, Steam Deck’s controller is highly customizable and it could even be used to map hotkeys on a keyboard. You can always check the Community Layouts section to get the controller setup that is perfect for you or you can tweak it yourself in any way you want.
One example of customized controls; configuring the left touchpad to work as a numpad so when you press the left upper corner on it it equips item 1, upper middle is item 2, right upper corner is item 3, middle left is item 4 and so on.
If you are a keyboard and mouse purist then Steam Deck can be easily connected to either wireless devices through Bluetooth or wired devices through a USB hub.
Mods
DayZ has a huge modding scene and many players play on heavily modded servers. Do these mods work on the Steam Deck?
Mods are a bit of a question mark right now (Maybe that’s why the game is still unsupported). Some players are reporting that they are able to play some lightly modded servers without issue while others are saying that mods don’t even work and the game states that they are corrupted, even pressing the repair button won’t work.
For some the Steam Workshop works just fine for modding while for others and heavy modding there are other ways to make them work. There is a workaround to make modded servers work on the Steam Deck. Follow the links below:
Having mods active will impact the performance on the Steam Deck.
DayZ on the Steam Deck is a stable enough experience to get a recommendation from us despite its unsupported status. Playing the game on the official servers works really well while for modding you might have to take other measures as stated above. For controls, you will have to experiment with customization or community layouts. Other than that, DayZ is very much accessible on the handheld.