Marauders

Due to a game update and EAC, Marauders is not currently playable on the Steam Deck. We will update the review accordingly when this changes!

Marauders is a tactical first-person shooter that takes the mechanics of Escape From Tarkov and puts them in an alternative 1990’s diesel-punk setting. Raid and salvage using any means necessary to survive against the other space mercenaries trying to do the same thing. With persistent gear and XP, you will only keep the items you escape the match with, but continually level up to tweak with mods, unlock new items, and accumulate more money. On top of that, you can also upgrade your spaceship and prepare for dogfights outside of the stations!

Team17 was reported to have said that Marauders would not be supported on the Steam Deck/Linux/Proton, but oddly enough, it is running! It does use Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) and I can confirm it is running with it and I was able to connect to others. This will only work with Proton 7.0-4 currently as the game will crash using Proton GE. With that in mind, this is an early access game with no specific Deck support coming, which means performance isn’t the most amazing.

I found that with lower settings, the game can run at a pretty solid 30 FPS most of the time. In extreme dogfights or certain areas, like the engine or airlock room, the game can dip to around 25 FPS. It also has no controller layout or design in mind, so we had to make our own! We have uploaded it to the community called “SDHQ Steam Deck V2”. Keep in mind that you will still need to use a joystick or right trackpad to control the mouse since there is no gamepad support.

Overall, the game is decently playable. I was surprised that it ended up running and decently too, though with graphical compromises and some dips to get used to. Now, it is possible that future updates could break compatibility and not be fixed, but the biggest hurdle is EAC, which is overcome entirely!

Screenshots:

Comparisons:

While the max settings can hold a solid 40+ FPS, the battery drain is significant, temps are way too high, and there are many more dips in framerate that can really be felt.

Stills:

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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