wait… the Steam Deck has Minecraft?!

Minecraft Java Edition, on the Steam Deck,  runs at over 200 frames per second, and today,   I’m gonna show you how I got this working.  For starters, the Steam Deck is Valve’s all   new portable gaming console and computer  with an astonishing $400 USD entry price  

Tag. If you’re aware of what the Nintendo  Switch is, think that, but for PC gaming,   with all of the customization options that you  could ever imagine a PC could have. Getting   Minecraft Java Edition up and running on the Steam  Deck was not the easiest process to figure out,  

But if you’re willing to do just a little  bit of tinkering and configuration,   playing Minecraft Java Edition on the Steam  Deck is a truly game-changing experience.   If you own a Steam Deck, you’ll definitely  want to check this out. Once it’s all set up,  

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This portion of the video will cover how to get  Minecraft Java up and running on the Steam Deck,   but later on in the video I will be getting into  what this experience is like once we have it all  

Up and running. If you’re new to using the Steam  Deck, the first thing that you need to know is the   difference between “Gaming Mode”, and “Desktop  Mode”. These are the Steam Deck’s two modes of   operation. When you turn the Steam Deck on,  you’ll be in “Gaming Mode”. If all you ever  

Want to do with your Steam Deck is play your  Steam games, and you just want an easy-to-use,   no hassle experience, not all that dissimilar  to the Nintendo Switch, but for PC gaming,   then “Gaming Mode” is definitely the way  to go for you. By the time we’re all done,  

You will be able to launch and play Minecraft  from this mode exclusively. But in order   to get Minecraft Java up and running, we  will have to head over to “Desktop Mode”. This mode of the Steam Deck uses a variation of  Linux for its operating system called “SteamOS”.  

Built into SteamOS is a program called “Discover”,  which allows you to just search for applications,   and install them. Yeah it’s really that easy. To  get Minecraft Java up and running, we’ll need to   grab a launcher to configure what version we’ll  be playing on, and that launcher needs to allow  

For us to easily install mods, which I’ll get into  later. While the official Minecraft launcher can   be downloaded and used here, it doesn’t exactly  make installing mods very easy. So instead, I’ll   be opting for a third party option called Prism.  Prism is a launcher that’s based off MultiMC,  

And this one actually allows for you to download  and install mods directly from within the launcher   itself. No needing to go to an external website.  Actually, once you have the launcher installed,   you’re already done with half the battle, since  this launcher comes with Java pre-installed as  

A dependency as well. Neat! If you want to use  Discord on your Steam Deck while playing Minecraft   as well, which is a little bit tricky but it does  work, feel free to download and install that from   the Discover app as well. You could even download  Minecraft Bedrock Edition from here, and chances  

Are the controller would just work right out of  the box, or so I’m guessing. To complete the other   half of the battle in regards to Java however,  let’s set up this launcher so it’ll show up in the  

Aforementioned “Gaming Mode”, assuming that you  want it to. To do so, just open up the main Steam   window and add the Prism Launcher as a non-steam  game to your library. And then just rename the   listing for “Prism Launcher” to something  like “Minecraft: Java Edition”, and then,  

You’re done! So now it’s time to head back over  to “Gaming Mode”, where the real fun can begin. Okay, we’re not done with the setup just yet,  but honestly, this is where the real fun begins   for me. Once we fire up Minecraft within  Gaming Mode, run through the initial setup,  

And create an instance for the latest  or really any version of Minecraft,   alongside installing the Fabric mod loader,  editing the instance reveals that this launcher   allows for you to download and install mods  directly from within the launcher itself.  

I would recommend that you check out this  video that I made a little while ago about   a wide range of quality of life mods if you’re  interested. For the purposes of this video,   I’ll grab the Sodium mod for better performance,  Iris for shader compatibility, and lastly,  

MidnightControls, which will make setting up  the Steam Deck’s controller an absolute breeze   in Java Edition. MidnightControls will also give  us some functionality that the built in controller   configuration won’t allow for us to get, such as  analog speed control, the ability to bind multiple  

In-game actions to a single button, and more.  So at last, now we can finally play the game!. Now that we have Minecraft up and running on the  Deck, how good or bad does it feel to actually  

Play? Well, this is pretty complicated to answer,  so let’s take it one step at a time, but quickly.   You’ve probably noticed throughout the course of  this video that I’ve had to tap the screen or move  

The mouse quite a lot versus what you might be  used to on other devices aside from a computer.   Once you have the game running, you won’t need to  do this nearly as much, but there are a few things  

You should keep in mind. First is that all of this  information might be outdated by the time you see   this video, so there’s that. MidnightControls  handles menu navigation kind of weirdly,   and scrolling through a menu with multiple items  on a single row will cause the cursor to have to  

Cycle through every item on that row before moving  down to the next one. Pretty much all forms of   text input will require that you use the on-screen  keyboard, which you have to manually trigger using   the Steam button and X. This includes any time  you have to type on a multiplayer server, unless  

You’re willing to connect a Bluetooth keyboard  for chat, which is an option. If you’re unfamiliar   with the Steam Deck, hold down the Steam button to  get a list of all available shortcuts in case you   forget any of them. MidnightControls allows for  you to customize basically all of the buttons to  

Your liking, but you may want to consider using  Steam’s built in controller configuration tool   for other tasks too. MidnightControls can’t  assign actions to the 4 buttons on the back   of the Steam Deck, which I think are useful for  more niche things like toggling the F3 menu,  

Shaders, or for triggering gyro controls. I’m  not going to go too deeply into it in this video,   but gyro controls add a level of precision to  your ability to move the camera in a way that   dual thumb-sticks just can’t capture. I have gyro  activation set to require me to hold down the R4  

Button whenever I want to use it. If you’re  using the Forge mod loader, I’ve heard good   things about the “Controllable” mod, so that’s  an option for all you Forge mod loader users. Let’s move onto frame-rate and battery testing.  Starting off, without using shaders at all,  

I get well over 200 frames per second while  standing still, and between 30 to 60 FPS with   shaders on. These numbers will obviously fluctuate  while moving around, but as you’ve seen throughout   this video, it’s really quite extraordinary for  a $400 device to perform this well. The battery  

Life with Minecraft on the Deck is honestly quite  impressive too, but I want you to keep in mind   that the Steam Deck’s screen only refreshes at 60  Hz, meaning you can’t see anything over 60 frames  

Per second on the Deck. I know that it’s common to  want to get as high of a frame-rate as possible,   no matter how much power it’s using, but when  dealing with a device that has a battery, I think   it’s important to know that using an uncapped  frame-rate will dramatically lower how long the  

Battery will last. With the in-game frame-rate  capped at 60fps, and again while standing still,   the Steam Deck was slated to last around 5  hours with the limited testing that I did,   and this number drops to about 100 minutes with  shaders on, losing 1% of battery every minute or  

So. To get a more accurate assessment of how  long you could expect the battery to last,   I went onto the Hypixel server, and parkoured for  a half an hour on one of the housing parkour maps,   and I only lost 11% on the battery over  the course of 30 minutes with the shaders  

Off. You can also use Steam’s built in  Performance setting to lower the total   amount of power the Deck can use, which  will give you even more battery life. Playing Minecraft Java Edition on the Steam Deck  is an imperfectly perfect experience. If you’re  

Willing to mess around a little bit to fine tune  the experience to your liking, then you might have   a blast picking up Minecraft again within this  form factor. If mods that improve this experience   even further show up in the future, I’ll try  to remember to include that information in the  

Description down below. Since you’ve watched the  video for this long, I do have one more item that   I want to mention. There are a few things that  I’ve shown in this video that you can not do from  

Within Steam’s “Gaming Mode”. If you want to use  any resource packs, or download and import custom   maps, you’ll need to download these manually from  within Desktop Mode. I would recommend creating a   shortcut on the desktop to this file location,  which is where the Prism Launcher installs to.  

If you want to change Minecraft’s Steam icon  and artwork so it looks more prim and proper   within “Gaming Mode”, check out steamgriddb.com  for all the artwork you’ll ever need, and then   right click on the game within these locations  within Steam to apply them. I wish it were a  

Little more intuitive than that. But anyways guys,  that just about does it for me for now. I hope you   all enjoyed this video, my name is AntVenom, and I  bid you all farewell. Thanks so much for watching!