Does Final Fantasy XIV run on Steam Deck?

Do you want to play FFXIV on your Steam Deck? Here’s everything you need to know about how to start your Eorzea adventure on the Valve handheld.

Getting Final Fantasy XIV up and going on the Steam Deck used to be a frustrating process. Before FFXIV was natively available on Steam, running through the base game and its many expansions required manually setting up the XIV Launcher and some extra Steam Deck mastery. 

Now that it’s natively available on the platform, making your way through the multiple expansions on Steam in preparation for Dawntrail is a breeze. With that in mind, here’s everything we know about how the massive critically acclaimed MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV, runs on Steam Deck.

Can you play FFXIV on Steam Deck support?

FFXIV is playable on the Steam Deck and the benchmarks for the Dawntrail bode well for the latest expansion on the go.

The Final Fantasy MMO narrowingly misses being fully verified on the handheld. According to Valve’s testing, this is due to the game occasionally requiring the use of the on-screen keyboard for entering text.

Square Enix

While FFXIV benefits from the game’s default graphics performing well on the handheld, as well as the in-game text being fully legible, any connected Bluetooth/USB controllers also require manual switching in the quick access menu settings, which may have prevented the game from receiving Valve’s highest commendation.

When FFXIV originally launched on Steam, there were issues with the launcher working on the Steam Deck through Proton Experimental. As it stands, those problems have now been fixed making the massively popular MMO available on the Valve handheld for anyone who wants to catch up with their dailies, and raid with friends on the go.

Dawntrail, the latest expansion for FFXIV, is currently out in early access. While we haven’t been able to test it out for ourselves, according to posts on r/ffxiv the Dawntrail benchmark results look promising. When put through the official benchmarking process, some FXIV users received a ‘fairly high’ result.

While we can’t know for certain until Dawntrail launches on July 2, a fairly high performance should mean you’ll be able to run through the brand-new quests and in-game content on the Steam Deck without much hassle.

Final Fantasy XIV requires 80GB of install space in your Steam Deck, which includes the base game, and expansions Heavensward, Stormsblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker. However, Dawntrail will demand even more from your handheld, requiring 140GB in total.

Picking up one of the best microSD cards for Steam Deck will ensure you have plenty of storage for Final Fantasy XIV and the latest Dawntrail expansion. Especially if you haven’t yet upgraded the SSD, or managed to add the 1TB Steam Deck OLED to your gaming setup.