Start with Overcooked! All You Can Eat - and learn Remote Play Together before you buy anything
For a Steam Deck owner who wants to play with friends, Overcooked! All You Can Eatis the pick. It has full crossplay, it works locally and online, its interface is large and readable at the Deck's native resolution, and a session is short enough to suit a handheld. If you want something to sink months into instead, Terraria and Stardew Valley are the two titles on this list that were almost designed for a device you play in bed.
But the most valuable thing about a Deck for playing with friends is not a game at all. It is Remote Play Together, which Valve's SteamOS 3.2 release notes confirm became fully functional on Deck for both hosting and joining sessions. A friend who owns a local-co-op game can stream it to your Deck and you play it with them without owning a copy. That single feature changes what you should buy: for a lot of two-player games, the group only needs one purchase. Our one copy, two players guide is the full version of that argument. Checked October 11, 2026.
What the hardware means for your shortlist
The screen is 1280x800 and about 7.4 inches.Valve's tech specs put the LCD model at 1280x800 with a 60Hz maximum refresh rate and the OLED model at 1280x800 on a 7.4-inch HDR panel at up to 90Hz. That resolution is the single most important number for this page, because it decides whether a game's text is readable.
There is a badge that tells you this, and you should use it. Valve's Deck Verified program requires a game to support the Deck's default resolution - 1280x800 or 1280x720 - with good default settings and legible text, and the Steamworks guidance sets a floor of 9 pixels for the smallest on-screen font at 1280x800. Every game's Steam page carries its current rating. Check the badge on the store page before you buy; it is the only Deck compatibility claim we would trust, including over ours.
It docks, and that matters more than it sounds.The USB-C port supports DisplayPort 1.4 Alt-mode with output up to 8K at 60Hz or 4K at 120Hz, per Valve's specs. Plugged into a television with a couple of controllers, a Deck becomes a small local co-op console - which is where the four-player games below stop being a joke on a handheld. Games default to 1280x800 on 16:10 external monitors, and you can raise the per-game maximum resolution in a game's properties.
It runs SteamOS, not Windows. SteamOS 3 is Arch-based with a KDE Plasma desktop. For buying purposes the practical consequence is the one above: let the Deck Verified badge, not the Windows system requirements, decide.
The three ways a Deck plays with friends
Online, like any PC. The Deck is a Steam machine, so anything with online multiplayer works as it would on a desktop. Deep Rock Galactic and Lethal Company are the picks here, both low-intensity enough to suit the hardware.
Remote Play Together, with one person paying. Portal 2, It Takes Two and Moving Out 2 are local co-op games a friend can stream to your Deck. This is the single cheapest multiplayer on the device.
Docked, as a couch console. Plug it into a television, add controllers, and Overcooked and Moving Out 2 become four-player couch games. The handheld screen is far too small to split; a television is not. See our second controller guide for pads that pair with a Deck.
What a Deck is not good at is split-screen on its own display. Four players on a 7.4-inch screen is not a feature, it is an eye test - which is why nothing on this page is recommended for undocked split-screen. The four-player lists live at four-player split-screen games.
