Cities Skylines 2 Steam Deck performance – How is it?

Cities Skylines built up an impression product, and Cities Skylines 2 looks to use that foundation to become a bigger and better sequel. However, performance issues have been reported at launch, with players having a hard time on high-end PCs.

But what about Valve's Steam Deck? Let's look at how performance is on the Steam Deck for Cities Skylines 2.

Is Cities Skylines 2 good on Steam Deck?

Cities Skylines 2 does not run well on Steam Deck and is not worth playing on the portable platform. The main issue is performance, dropping as low as 10 FPS and mostly staying around 20 FPS. Cities Skylines 2 has performance issues on PCs as well, but it runs significantly worse on Steam Deck. It seems to be a combination of poor optimization from developer Colossal Order and the Steam Deck's hardware.

Related: How to create your own district in Cities Skylines II

Some players are reporting the game becomes playable on Steam Deck after reducing graphical settings, but it still looks rough. Choppy gameplay is the main problem, especially the more you build. Cities Skylines 2 requires a lot of zooming in and zooming, which can be taxing on the CPU. Sadly for fans of the first, it may be worth holding off on Cities Skylines 2 until performance issues are addressed, especially on Steam Deck.

Cities Skylines saw numerous patches and updates to fix performance issues, so Colossal Order may follow suit with the sequel. There is no guarantee Cities Skylines 2 will run well on the Steam Deck due to its constraints, but players may see an increase to 30 FPS, which has become the acceptable standard.

For more information on Cities Skylines 2, check out How to fix Power Station Overload in Cities Skylines 2 and How to fix Slope Too Steep in Cities Skylines 2 on Pro Game Guides.