Valve’s Steam Deck can play Switch games through emulation, but bragging about it probably isn’t a good idea.
Fortunately, Nibel (@Nibellion on Twitter) did notice, and got a screenshot of it. That app tile is the one on the far right in the screenshot, and if you’re not familiar with it by name, that’s the Nintendo Switch emulator for PCs known as Yuzu.
Valve has since removed the original video and replaced it with a new one that drops the Yuzu icon in favor of Portal 2. Why is that, you may wonder? Emulation isn’t illegal, and it isn’t necessarily piracy, either, but it can be used in that way. Because of that, emulators have always lived in a sort of « grey area » in the marketplace, and companies like Nintendo absolutely hate the software.
You can’t play Splatoon 3 online, but the single-player is still a lot of fun.
While it isn’t on Steam itself, Yuzu does indeed run on the Steam Deck. In the video, it has clearly been added as a « non-Steam game », which has benefits even for Windows gamers—you can use the Steam Input hierarchy for Yuzu. Believe it or not, the Steam Deck will even play the overwhelming majority of Switch games.
However, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and the Xenoblade Chronicles games have major performance issues on the Steam Deck.
