Call of Duty isn't on Steam, well the modern Call of Duty games at least, because they're locked to Activision's Battle.net platform. On top of that, some of these games have anti-cheat software that's not currently possible to run on SteamOS. Altogether, this would suggest, for any other gaming platform, that Call of Duty won't work on Steam Deck, but that isn't actually the case. In this article, we'll explain how Call of Duty is out now on Steam Deck.
Will Call of Duty Get a Steam Version?
Some older Call of Duty games, like Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops, are still on Steam, but modern Call of Duty games aren't. This makes older Call of Duty games a lot easier to get up and running on Steam Deck proper, i.e. playable through Proton on SteamOS itself.
It's not likely a new Call of Duty game makes the transition to Steam, as Activision has been pushing its Battle.net ecosystem for years, refusing to bring their games back to the platform. However, as Microsoft's purchase of Activision-Blizzard is set to go through next year, maybe new leadership will change things.
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Likely, Call of Duty will at least come to the Microsoft Store, but Microsoft has brought games to Steam before. It's not necessarily every Microsoft game, but Microsoft has been a lot better about opening up their games to other platforms in recent years. So, it's possible Call of Duty might eventually make the transition to Steam.
But, it's not the most likely thing to happen, and even if it were to happen, it probably wouldn't for a while. Plus, the whole anti-cheat system would have to get sorted out in order to run natively on Steam Deck, too. Not an impossible task by any means, but one that requires engineering.
However, you don't actually need Call of Duty to come to Steam to play Call of Duty on Steam Deck.
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How to Play Call of Duty on Steam Deck
The process for getting Call of Duty up and running on Steam Deck isn't a particularly complicated process, but it is a bit tedious. Luckily, Steam Deck allows you to install other operating systems on Deck, including Windows.
Getting Windows up and running on Deck is very similar to getting it up and running on any other computer. Essentially, you create a Windows installation media, boot from it on Steam Deck, then go through your normal Windows installation process.
Of course, once Windows is installed, you'll have to go through and set up your installation to work how you'd like it and perform its best, but then, you can download Battle.net itself and get Call of Duty, any of the mainline modern Call of Duty games, through there.
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Warzone is the most technically demanding modern Call of Duty game out there, and you can get it up and running on Steam Deck. There hasn't been a ton of testing of the game on Deck just yet, but if you whack all your settings down to low, you should be able to hit 60FPS or above pretty regularly.
Unfortunately, it looks like Warzone is too much of a stuttery mess on Deck to be a smooth experience right now, but that may change in the future as the community figures out the best tweaks to get running its absolute best.
Luckily, other Call of Duty games, the modern ones, run a lot smoother and are a lot less technically demanding, especially their traditional 6v6 multiplayer packages. With low settings, or even medium settings, and some tweaking, you can likely get a stable 60FPS out of Call of Duty on the Deck, anywhere.
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With wireless networking, ping will always be a concern with Call of Duty on the go, but WiFi is WiFi regardless of what device you're using. You won't have much worse ping on Steam Deck than any other device over WiFi, which is nice at the least.
It's not a perfect experience on Steam Deck, but it's pretty solid, and it's more technically advanced than Call of Duty once was on the PS3 generation, and it's comparable to an Xbox One Call of Duty experience. In time, no doubt, the community will come up with tweaks and optimized settings to get Call of Duty as smooth as possible on Deck.
Call of Duty: Mobile also works on Deck through Windows, Windows 11 to be exact. Windows 11 folds in native Android app support, so you can play the game natively on Windows 11. However, you can download an Android emulator on Windows 10 to play the game, but your mileage may vary there with what works best.
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If it's playable on Windows, chances are it'll work on Windows on Steam Deck, which also includes the older Call of Duty titles if you ever run into problems running them through Steam, Altogether, Windows on Steam Deck gives you options for a huge variety of mobile options to play Call of Duty.
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