It is, but so is Windows. There is also a barely visible small text about it, right next to the trademark and copyright information nobody reads. It's quite well hidden.
Does the Switch have any exclusively-online games? That's a genuine question that I'm interested in for comparison purposes.
I think it's a load of shit that any single-player experience requires an internet connection. I still know people with shoddy enough connections that they can't play games like Diablo 4 on their desktop pc. However, I don't think that it should disqualify a game from being Verified.
That's a question that occurred to me during this discussion too. Please ping me if you'd get an answer. I'm not a Nintendo person, so I'm not sure where to even start researching that.
Kingdom hearts cloud version for the switch comes to mind, however considering "Cloud Version" is literally in the name I feel like you should expect it to need online.
A niche issue, but if you have two switches utilizing the same account, the second switch needs internet connection to ping/verify to make sure that your account isn't being played on more than one switch at the same time. This occurs when initially loading any game on the second switch regardless if the game itself is an online game and allegedly every few hours after that.
At the very least there should be a separate category for games verified to work offline. It would be easier to tolerate if it was a generic Proton compatibility rating, but it's not, it's a rating for how well it works on this handheld.
A hotspot is hardly a solution. If I'd be willing to drain my phone battery in travel, gaming on a phone is an option too. For me saving the phone battery is one of the primary advantages of a dedicated gaming device.
It is an optional solution. You could choose to have a wifi hotspot as well, or be in a location offering wifi. Its having the specific uaecase of refusing to use any of the 3 is saying, "I dont do this, therefore i want the definition changed" even though the changed definition doesn't apply to everyone.
The current definition of steam verified is very basic, and should stay basic. And people should adjust their filters for their definition instead of valve picking a more precise definition, and the definition being illogical for other usecases
Using filters or creating/joining a curators list is precisely what you should do for more specific situations.
Is there even such a filter? There is a filter for singleplayer/multiplayer but it's not the same thing. There are plenty of games that won't even start offline or the singleplayer experience is severely degraded without a good reason. The modern Hitman trilogy comes to mind. There is no way to filter for that.
Im terms of a perfect filter, not exactly, hence the best method for those crowds would be having a curated list, rather than applying said defition to all users..the users would know more about games tham someone hired at valve who would check a game for basic functionalities and doesnt evem finish the game (there have been times where a game would get verified, but has something broken late into the game). A curator would be able to adjust lists and add remove them as new updates happen that might add/remove functionality, something valve isnt going to revisit after getting a verified status.
Ah yes lemme just shell out $50 dollars a month or more just so I can use my steam deck to play multiplayer games over the slow and spotty mobile network that exists where I live. That's a totally reasonable thing to do.
Or I can just continue to pay 15 bucks a month and use my steam deck offline while still getting decent enough service and enough data to do everything I'd actually be able to reliably do on a mobile network outside of a large city.
Mobile networks ain't reliable and not every plan permits the mobile hotspot feature to function. That was my entire point with that comment.
That when when your device is unlocked your carrier still gets to decide if that particular feature is even functional.