League of Legends On Steam Deck: Can You Play The Game On The Console?

League of Legends is a game that is known to work well on any sort of budget pc. It's one of its key strengths that players all around the world can play it, no matter how high end the pc is. But can you play it on a handheld console like the Steam Deck? Let's find out.

League of Legends is one of the most famous video games in the world, with millions of players on every continent. The game is very hardware friendly and can be played on almost any device. The requirements to run the game are basically the bare minimum any pc or laptop should have. 

The Steam Deck is a handheld console with direct access to your Steam library. You can play a lot of your already owned pc games on there. Valve has partnered with companies like AMD to make even AAA titles work on the console.

Can You Play League of Legends On The Steam Deck?

Yes. Yes you can. There are multiple Reddit threads documenting the installation and the gameplay of LoL on the Steam Deck and while the game's controls don't work well with a handheld console you can definitely suffer through it.

Reddit User u/LordKitsuna has made a thread in February 2023 that got quite a bit of traction. In it, he explained that the game ran even better on the Steam Deck than on some Linux desktops. He mentioned that it runs very smoothly without any problems. 

He does mention though that finding out a control scheme can be quite difficult and will probably differ on your personal preferences.

How To Play LoL On Your Steam Deck

This will be a short tutorial how you can play League of Legends on your personal Steam Deck.

1. Install Proton BattlEye Runtime and Proton EasyAntiCheat Runtime straight from your Steam store. If you play loads of multiplayer games, you probably already have these.
2. Switch to the Desktop Version of the Steam Deck. Go into the Discover Function and look for an app called Lutris.
3. Install Lutris, create a shortcut and open it up.
4. On Lutris search for League of Legends and choose your right server and install the game.
5. The Riot Games Client will open up, and you will be able to sign in. Be careful as you should wait before the game is completely installed before actually signing in as you could break the installation.
6. League of Legends will now show up in your Lutris Library and on your desktop. 
7. From there you can add it to Steam.
8. Start the Game from your Steam App and enjoy the Game