I'm currently using a Steam Deck to play through Diablo IV and it's absolutely amazing how well Diablo IV runs. Once you get it working, it works great.
That being said it did take me an unbelievable amount of tinkering to get it to work. And unfortunately SteamOS comes with all of the typical bugginess you would expect from a Linux OS baked into a handheld device (keyboard disappears, trackpads stop working randomly, UI elements overlap with no way of removing them, etc.)
Still, the Steam Deck is a freaking achievement. The battery life is unbelievably good for a device of this kind. If a new Steam Deck comes out with an OLED screen it's a day 1 purchase for me.
Maybe you didn't know what you were doing? There are some tutorials to follow online which makes it easy.
For non-SD users reading this: you can get D4 running in about the time it takes to download Battle.net and the game itself. You basically install Battle.net on the deck, and then create a launcher from within Steam. That's it.
Okay, I'm on Hacker News, what are the odds I don't know what I'm doing?
You don't "just install" Diablo IV on the Deck. You have to add the Battle.net Setup binary as a non-Steam app, or go through Lutris. I chose to not use Lutris and instead go through Steam which requires you to go to desktop mode, install it, and then change the paths from the setup binary to the Battle.net Launcher binary, which means going through the file system to look for it, and the paths could differ depending on whether you installed it on an SD card or the SSD.
Apologies for being defensive. I want to make sure people who read this thread take the positive reception with a grain of salt. I had to do all of this as a brand new Steam Deck user. All of this was made more complicated by a couple of UI bugs in the Steam UI and the fact that desktop mode has a bug where the keyboards and trackpads stop working randomly unless Steam big picture is enabled. I had to discover all of this through Google searches.
A couple more problems: one of the tutorials online forgot to mention you have to change the launch directory as well. That was about an hour wasted trying to figure out why Battle.net was not launching. Additionally, you can't download games with the screen off. That's because pressing the power button behaves like a computer, in that it makes the entire OS go to sleep. You have to literally keep your Steam Deck on in order for it to download the game.
I’m pretty sure you have to install the launcher through wine and then install it. Then you have to configure the right capability layer through the steam launcher IIRC
I did everything from within Steam. Set up the installer as a Steam app, then set up the BNet launcher as a steam app, and done. It took a few minutes, basically waiting for the installation and download.
That being said it did take me an unbelievable amount of tinkering to get it to work. And unfortunately SteamOS comes with all of the typical bugginess you would expect from a Linux OS baked into a handheld device (keyboard disappears, trackpads stop working randomly, UI elements overlap with no way of removing them, etc.)
Still, the Steam Deck is a freaking achievement. The battery life is unbelievably good for a device of this kind. If a new Steam Deck comes out with an OLED screen it's a day 1 purchase for me.