Pirate Remaster Sails Surprisingly Well on Steam Machine, Matching Desktop GPU Performance

Ubisoft's freshly launched remake of Assassin's Creed Black Flag — titled Black Flag Resynced — has received Steam Deck Verified status, and hands-on testing confirms that both the Deck and Valve's Steam Machine desktop box can handle the game without significant performance issues. Testing conducted by Rock Paper Shotgun's deputy editor James Archer, incorporating the day-one patch, reveals that while neither device is running the game effortlessly at maximum settings, both are capable platforms for experiencing the pirate adventure with the right configuration tweaks applied.

The Steam Deck story involves a familiar balancing act between visual fidelity and frame stability. At native resolution using TAA, even the Handheld Low preset only managed around 28fps in Resynced's built-in benchmark tool. Enabling FSR on Quality mode pushed that figure to a more acceptable 35fps, though Archer found that demanding in-game locations like the city of Havana — packed with NPCs and environmental detail — could drag Quality-mode framerates back into the twenties. Switching FSR to Balanced mode sacrificed some sharpness but proved far more effective at maintaining a consistent 30fps floor during those intensive sequences, while quieter open-water sections allowed the settings to push as high as 45fps.

Custom settings configured on top of the Handheld Low preset provided additional flexibility, with options like screen space effects and terrain quality tolerating a bump to standard Low without exacting a heavy performance penalty. The Ubisoft Connect version of the game also grants access to the full graphics menu on Steam Deck — a meaningful improvement over how Assassin's Creed Shadows restricted Deck users to a locked preset — though whether the Steam Store version shares this benefit remained unconfirmed at time of testing. Battery life emerged as the most notable downside, with an original LCD Steam Deck drained completely in just one hour and nineteen minutes under these settings.

The Steam Machine produced arguably the more surprising results. Running Black Flag Resynced at 1080p, the device averaged between 43fps on Ultra High and 82fps on Ultra Low, with High settings landing at 57fps. When compared side by side with an RTX 4060 desktop GPU — which typically outperforms the RTX 5050 found inside the Steam Machine — Resynced's results were remarkably close, suggesting Ubisoft's port is unusually well-optimized for the compact, laptop-style silicon inside Valve's box. The recommended custom settings for the Steam Machine averaged 70fps in the benchmark tool, with a comfortable buffer against drops below 60fps during normal play.

For players willing to sacrifice a few frames, the Steam Machine can even accommodate ray tracing at lower-end configurations. Using the game's Extended RT setting alongside Medium quality toggles for both Ray Tracing Quality and BVH Quality brought the benchmark average down to 59fps, with mid-fifties performance reported in densely populated city environments. One caveat flagged during testing is that FSR's Native AA mode runs noticeably slower than standard native-resolution TAA rendering in Resynced, making it a setting to avoid despite its apparent appeal as a quality-enhancing option.