Is League Of Legends Playable On Steam Deck?
Steam Deck is one of the fastest-growing handheld game consoles in the business, replicating everything Steam has to offer and more all from the palm of your hand. With a massive catalogue of games, appealing to the nature of long-time PC players and casual party-game lovers, Steam Deck is proving to be quite the hit.
But, can you play League of Legends on Steam Deck? Well, here's all you need to know about Riot Games' favourite MOBA and the possibility of it running on Valve's consoles.
Can League of Legends Run On Steam Deck?
Click to enlargeThe first thing you need to know is that League of Legends usually runs on a Riot Games client, rather than Steam, when you play on PC. The game is directly downloaded from Riot's website and runs on their own servers.
Steam Deck isn't designed for non-steam games to be played on it, given that it's a Valve console and they want to keep the core game catalogue as titles they have pre-existing relationships with on PC.
So, League of Legends is not downloadable from the games list on Steam Deck.
That doesn't mean it's impossible to play League of Legends on Steam Deck though.
How To Play League of Legends on Steam Deck
Emulators have become quite a popular software in recent years, especially with the expansion into handheld gaming such as consoles like Steam Deck and an increased number of bigger mobile titles.
Using browser scripts to manipulate games to run on different consoles is generally seen to allow mobile titles to run on PC, but this can also be reversed, in the case of Steam Deck.
That means, while League of Legends isn't actually a Steam Deck game, if your modding skills are quite exemplary, there are ways to play the game on the console.
There are a few long-winded ways to manipulate your Steam Deck to run Windows, and then subsequently Riot Games' client and League of Legends itself, although this could damage your console.
Ultimately, it might be worth benching the idea of running League of Legends on Steam Deck, especially considering you will likely have to plug in a mouse and keyboard to play anyway, and then you're losing the benefits of playing on a handheld console instead of a laptop anyway.
