Can you play The Lord of the Rings: Gollum on Steam Deck?

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum may not have gathered the best reception from fans with its two trailers, but it’s still a new LOTR game, so the hype is inevitable. This leaves many gamers wondering if they will be able to play as Gollum on their platform of choice. For example, the Steam Deck is constantly rising in popularity and expanding its games library.

The good news for everyone wanting to play The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is that developer Daedalic Entertainment is eager to bring the game to every platform on the market. The bad news for Steam Deck owners is that their platform is the odd one out, at least in terms of official information.

Daedalic announced that The Lord of the Rings: Gollum will be released on May 25 on numerous platforms, namely PC (via Steam and the Epic Games Store), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. A Nintendo Switch port has also been promised, although its release is hanging on a loose “second half of 2023” timeframe.

Related: Is The Lord of the Rings: Gollum on Xbox Game Pass?

What about the Steam Deck, then? The truth is neither Daedalic, nor Valve have said anything about The Lord of the Rings: Gollum’s availability on the handheld. That’s not ideal, obviously, but the silver lining is that there also hasn’t been a definitive statement that Gollum won’t be playable on Steam Deck. It’s a rather thin straw to grasp, but in this particular case, there’s good enough reason to read the absence of news as potentially good news.

When is The Lord of the Rings: Gollum coming to Steam Deck?

As we said, there is no definitive info on if or when The Lord of the Rings: Gollum will be available on the Steam Deck. Due to how Valve’s handheld works, however, there’s a good chance the latest Middle Earth adventure will be readily available sooner rather than later.

The Steam Deck isn’t exactly a separate platform in the way the Nintendo Switch is, for example. It’s more of a portable PC, with the hardware limitations that come with its smaller size. The point is that the Steam Deck library is expanded by Valve testing and adjusting PC titles already available on Steam, and doesn’t require a unique port like other platforms. In that sense, the lack of a pre-release confirmation that The Lord of the Rings: Gollum will be available on Steam Deck does not guarantee that it won’t be available.

Sure, an official announcement would have been preferable, but we sincerely doubt that a mid-2023 game releasing on last-gen consoles will skip the opportunity to appear on the popular Steam Deck. It won’t surprise us if The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is playable on Steam Deck at launch or very soon after at the very worst.