Alan Wake 2 is one of the most demanding games that has been released recently, and it appears to be playable on the Steam Deck.
While the game doesn’t run natively on the Steam Deck due to the lack of Epic Games Launcher, which has no native version on SteamOS/Linux, there are workarounds to making the game work.
It might be hard to believe Alan Wake 2 is playable on the Deck, but it is quite possible. We have already seen Rog Ally, which is a competitor to Steam Deck with better hardware, able to run Alan Wake 2. However, Steam Deck is also able to play Alan Wake 2, even if the performance right now is far from flattering.
How To Run Alan Wake 2 On Steam Deck
The instructions below come courtesy of FelipeRSTV so make sure to check their video as well.
- First, add your desired game to either the Heroic Launcher or Lutris. Make sure to select Wine-GE as the runner you wish to use.
- Once the game is added, proceed to run Winetricks from within your chosen launcher. A window will appear; simply click “OK” without making any changes. Ensure that the option labeled “Select the default prefix wineprefix” remains checked.
- A subsequent Winetricks window will appear. In this window, choose the option that says “Install DLL or Windows component” and then click “OK.”
- Another window will open, presenting you with a list of packages. From this list, locate and select the following three packages: d3dcompiler_43, d3dcompiler_47, and vcrun2022. After selecting these, click “OK” to proceed with the installation.
- Once all the selected components are installed, attempt to launch the game. If the game starts and you encounter a message stating that “it needs to have at least 16 GB of RAM,” then the setup has been successful.
- To address the RAM requirement, you will need to enter the Steam Deck BIOS. Once there, reduce the VRAM/UMA Buffer setting to 256 MB.
Going through this step should make Alan Wake 2 playable on the Steam Deck. You can also check out our best settings guide for the PC version if you have issues running the game there
Best Settings Guide For Steam Deck
GRAPHICS
- Display Mode: Fullscreen
- Display Resolution: 1280×800
- Render Resolution: 426×266 (Ultra Performance)
- Resolution Upscaling: FSR 2
- Vsync: Off
- Quality Preset: Custom
- Post Processing Quality: Low
- Texture Resolution: Low
- Texture Filtering: Low
- Volumetric Lighting: Low
- Volumetric Spotlight Quality: Low
- Global Illumination Quality: Low
- Shadow Quality: Low
- Shadow Filtering: Medium
- Shadow Detail: Medium
- Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO): Disabled
- Global Reflections: Off
- Screen Space Reflections (SSR): Off
- Fog Quality: Medium
- Terrain Quality: Medium
- Far Object Detail (LOD): Medium
- Scattered Object Density: Low
- Ray Tracing Preset: Off
- DLSS Ray Reconstruction: Disabled
- Direct Lighting: Disabled
- Path Traced Indirect Lighting: Off
- Transparency: Off
Check out the game in action on Steam Deck in the gameplay video featured below.
Alan Wake 2 is available to play now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series. The game is only available on the Epic Games Store and was published by Epic Games. Remedy Entertainment is the developer, and the game runs on a custom engine developed by them called the Northlight Engine.
