Fallout London on Steam Deck is still an exercise in misery

With no sign of an official Fallout 5 on the horizon, the massive fan mod Fallout London has arrived to save fans from years of content drought. While Fallout London is an amazing experience on PC, the brilliant game-sized mod for Fallout 4 is a tough nut to crack on Steam Deck. With countless hours already spent in apocalyptic London on PC, it was only natural to want to play more of the game on Steam Deck.

Considering Valve’s handheld easily powers through Bethesda’s 2015 RPG, it should be an easy task. Unfortunately, getting the game to run perfectly on the portable-that-could is surprisingly annoying. On launch, Fallout London suffered from numerous technical issues , including long loading screens, frequent crashing, damage calculation issues and more.

Some players couldn’t get out of the game’s tutorial due to a particularly nasty crash following the game’s intense intro train section. On PC, a quick installation of the Buffout 4 mod fixes this. However, weeks after launch, running Fallout’s awesome mod on Steam Deck is still a rough time.

If you want to benefit from shader pre-loading, you’ll have to use the Fallout London Downgrader to even begin installing the game, then hope the mod’s installer doesn’t crash on execution. After that, you’ll also have to install Buffout 4 to get past the infamous train crash. Even after all of that, Fallout London is not stable on Steam Deck.

Not in the slightest. Of course, it’s a mod for a game that’s runnin.