Steam Deck adjusts space for pre-built shader caches in upcoming update – That’s Gaming

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In a future update, Steam Deck plans to reduce the space taken up by various games’ shader cache files. According to a report from Phoronix, the reduction in file size will be about 60%, giving players back quite a bit of space.

The change is expected to come with the Mesa 23.1 update, which brings a change to the open source video drivers used by the Steam Deck. These changes were brought about by contributions from Valve, AMD, Intel and Microsoft, along with other major companies.

According to PCGamer, Steam Deck developer Pierre-Loup Griffais confirmed that Valve hopes to make these changes for the Steam Deck and how it handles pre-built shader caches.

“This is our expectation for the pre-built shader caches,” said Griffais, who also asked that expectations be tempered because changes to the shader cache do not involve changes for transcoded video depots, which are also part of the shader pre-caching process in the Steam Deck UI.

The Steam Deck gets quite a bit of support, with a recent report showing that 73 of the 100 most-played games on Steam are supported on the handheld gaming platform. Valve also recently released a list of the 20 most-played games on the Steam Deck, which was led by titles such as Hogwarts Legacy, Elden Ring and Stardew Valley.