Is Modern Warfare 3 on Steam Deck?

Modern Warfare 3 arrives on PC through Steam and Battle.net on November 10 and you might be wondering whether you can play it the Steam Deck. Here’s everything you need to know about playing MW3 on Steam Deck.

Call of Duty’s Battle.net exclusivity finally ended with 2022’s MW2 launch, and Modern Warfare 3 follows suit by being available on Steam. This is incredibly useful for players who like to keep all of their games in a single launcher but that’s not the only benefit as Steam games sometimes come with an extra bonus – Steam Deck compatibility.

Modern Warfare 3 features a brand-new campaign, multiplayer on fan-favorite maps, and an all-new take on Zombies, so you might be wondering if you can play on the go with your Steam Deck. Here’s everything we know about whether MW3 is playable on Steam Deck.

Can you play Modern Warfare 3 on Steam Deck?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 isn’t Steam Deck verified so isn’t playable on the handheld device, despite being available on Steam.

This was also the case for Modern Warfare 2. The problem comes from the SteamOS being a branch of Linux, which doesn’t support Call of Duty’s Ricochet anti-cheat. Ricochet looks for Windows and SteamOS doesn’t have the correct files to allow Modern Warfare 3 to run.

So even though Modern Warfare 3 is on Steam, don’t expect to play a verified version on your Steam Deck any time soon, with the only hope being an update to Ricochet that allows for Linux.

How to play Modern Warfare 3 on Steam Deck

All hope isn’t lost though, as you’ll be able to play Modern Warfare 3 on Steam Deck by installing Windows to the device.

It’s a tricky process and might not even be worth your time. Because Modern Warfare 3 isn’t Steam Deck verified there’s no guarantee it’ll run well and you’ll probably be at a competitive disadvantage in multiplayer unless you connect a controller or mouse and keyboard.

But, if you want to play the campaign wherever you’re most comfortable, then you should be able to do that.

For more on Modern Warfare 3, you can check out our other guides:

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