At this year's EVE Fanfest, the developers of EVE Online sister game Frontier were touting its new driving controls and gamepad support—features that have already resulted in a vastly different game than Fenris Creations' (formerly CCP Games) original MMO.
As a big Steam Deck sicko, I was naturally curious whether Frontier's gamepad support opened up any portable PC possibilities, and it turns out some members of the team have been on a "side quest" to make it happen, to quote game director Sæmundur Hermannsson.
Frontier product manager Scott McCabe has been personally experimenting with the game on Valve's handheld. "I wanted to get on the Steam Deck," said McCabe. "I have one at my desk, and we're just kind of testing it out, dipping our toes in the water."
"Anything that runs on Proton can basically be squeaked onto a Steam Deck," McCabe said, pointing out that, at that point, there's little separating the Deck from a normal PC aside from power and performance considerations.
The original EVE Online, by contrast, has been playable on Steam Deck for some time, but is a much less obvious fit for handheld play with its more mouse and keyboard-centric control scheme. "As soon as you start having a control system that works with a game pad," said McCabe, "There's absolutely no reason you can't put it onto these types of devices."
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