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Can you play World of Warcraft on Steam Deck?

Can you play World of Warcraft on Steam Deck?
Images via Activision Blizzard
Steam PC Games

Written by 

Dave McAdam

Published 

28th Apr 2023 10:01

Contents

Does World of Warcraft run on the Steam Deck? World of Warcraft has always been exclusive to the PC but now there is a portable gaming PC thanks to Steam. Steam Deck is an excellent way to bring your PC games anywhere, but not all games are available on it. Here is everything you need to know about the game on the Steam Deck.

Is World of Warcraft Steam Deck verified?

An Orc in World of Warcraft looking at a totem
Click to enlarge

Steam Deck verification is a system by which games on Steam are verified to work as expected on the Steam Deck. This is usually the first port of call for finding out if a game works on the Steam Deck.

Unfortunately, World of Warcraft is not on Steam and therefore is not eligible for Steam Deck verification. Furthering the bad news, the PC version of World of Warcraft is typically only available on Windows. As the Steam Deck uses Linux, this means World of Warcraft will not run as standard on the Steam Deck. Thankfully, there are ways around this.

Can you side-load World of Warcraft onto the Steam Deck?

A lot of World of Warcraft players standing on a bridge together
Click to enlarge

For the industrious among you, there are ways around the issue here. If you really want to play World of Warcraft on your Steam Deck, you will need to install Battle.net on it. This takes a bit of work, but it isn't too difficult to do.

The trick to this is that once you download the installer for Battle.net with your browser, you then need to run it through Steam. Once it is installed, open the app and log into your account. You will then be able to download and install World of Warcraft.

Once you have World of Warcraft on your Steam Deck, you will need an addon that will allow you to play the game with the Steam Deck controls.

The ConsolePort addon will make playing World of Warcraft a much more comfortable experience, and it comes with different versions for Classic and the modern game.

That is it for our World of Warcraft Steam Deck guide. For all the WoW info you could need, check out our World of Warcraft homepage.

Dave McAdam
About the author
Dave McAdam
Dave is a Senior Guides Writer at GGRecon, after several years of freelancing across the industry. He covers a wide range of games, with particular focus on shooters like Destiny 2, RPGs like Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, and fighting games like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8.
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Established in 2019, we don’t just cover games - we live them. Our expert team is full of dedicated gamers, qualified journalists, and industry insiders who collectively boast decades of experience covering gaming and esports. This deep-rooted expertise allows us to provide authoritative and nuanced perspectives first-hand from a team who are playing, and researching every game covered on our website. 

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