Drift games on Steam Deck

In short: Verified (works great out of the box) → Absolute Drift, CarX Drift Racing Online, Parking Garage Rally Circuit, Touge Shakai, Inertial Drift, art of rally, CarX Street and #DRIVE Rally. Playable (works, with a catch) → JDM, CarX Drift Racing Online 2, Forza Horizon 5, Initial Drift Online, Drift86, Torque Drift. Unsupported → Assetto Corsa, DiRT Rally 2.0. New, with a native SteamOS build → DRIFTIT.

What the four ratings mean

• Verified: Valve played it on a Deck and everything passed: the default controls work, the button prompts on screen match the Deck's, text is readable at 1280×800, and the default settings run well.
• Playable: it works, but something needs a little effort: small text, a launcher you have to click through with the touchscreen, Xbox prompts instead of Deck ones, or settings to turn down.
• Unsupported: Valve found it does not run properly on SteamOS today.
• Unknown: Valve has not tested it yet. That says nothing about how well it runs.

You can see a game's rating on its Steam page (the "Steam Deck Compatibility" box) or in the Deck's own store, which marks Verified games with a green tick.

Verified drift games

1. Absolute Drift ($14.99 · Verified · native Linux)

Funselektor's 2015 top-down drift game: clean, almost empty worlds, 34 levels across Driftkhana, Drifting and Mountain Drifting, free-roam areas, ghosts and online leaderboards. It is one of the few drift games with a native Linux build, so on the Deck it runs without Proton, and it asks for very little (2 GB of RAM), which is kind to the battery. It is hard: the first hour is mostly spinning, and that is the point. More like it in games like Absolute Drift.

2. CarX Drift Racing Online ($16.99 · Verified)

The default online drift game on PC: realistic drift physics, more than 120 cars to tune, online lobbies of up to 16 players across platforms, TOP-32 competitions and hundreds of Workshop maps. With almost 90,000 Steam reviews it is by far the most played game here. Valve's tests passed on every count, so it is the safe pick if you want to drift with other people on the Deck. It runs through Proton (there is no Linux build), which the Deck handles for you.

3. Parking Garage Rally Circuit ($9.99 · Verified · native Linux)

Walaber's 2024 arcade racer turns multi-storey car parks into race tracks, in a late-1990s console look. The controls are exactly "accelerate, reverse, steer, drift", so sliding through tight ramps is the whole game; there are time trials, races, online lobbies and split-screen. Short runs and low demands make it a very good Deck game, and its Steam reviews are Overwhelmingly Positive.

4. Touge Shakai ($14.99 · Verified)

An online touge game set in 1990s Japanese car culture: mountain passes, physics tuned for competitive drift racing, and a balance between realism and fun rather than a full sim. If you want the Initial D feeling on a handheld, this is the Verified one.

5. Inertial Drift ($19.99 · Verified)

An arcade racer with an unusual idea: twin-stick drifting. The left stick steers and the right stick swings the back of the car out, which feels made for the Deck's two sticks. A big roster of very different cars and tracks, and split-screen for two.

6. art of rally ($24.99 · Verified · native Linux)

Also by Funselektor: rally from the 1960s to Group B on stylised stages, seen from a high camera. It is a rally game, not a drift game, but the cars live sideways on gravel and snow, and it is one of the best-looking games you can carry around. Native Linux too. We compared it with its neighbours in games like art of rally.

7–8. CarX Street ($19.99) and #DRIVE Rally ($19.99), also Verified

CarX Street is CarX's open-world street racer (mountain roads, highways, city streets, detailed tuning), with drifting as one part of it; Steam lists a native Linux build. #DRIVE Rally is an arcade rally game with 25 cars, over 600 km of stages, global leaderboards and ghosts; its store page does not talk about drifting, so treat it as the pick for sliding on loose surfaces.

New: DRIFTIT (native SteamOS · Valve rating pending)

Ours, so weigh this with that in mind. DRIFTIT is a top-down drift game in the spirit of Absolute Drift: one car, the camera straight overhead, a handbrake and 20 short tracks, three laps each against a target time, with a ghost of your best run. Points come from speed and drift angle, and a held slide builds a multiplier. The tracks are short, which suits a handheld.

It came out on Steam on 24 October 2026 at $4.99, for Windows, Mac and Linux. The Linux build is native and lists "Ubuntu 22.04 or SteamOS 3" in its requirements (350 MB of disk). Steam lists full controller support (DualShock and DualSense pads included), Steam Leaderboards and Steam Cloud saves. Valve rates a game for Deck some time after release, so DRIFTIT shows "Unknown" for now. We play it on a Steam Deck OLED ourselves and tuned the Linux build for it, so that it starts in Game Mode and paces its frames to the panel's refresh rate.

Want to try it first? The same tracks are free in the browser on any PC or Mac, on the keyboard (arrows or WASD, Space for the handbrake) or with a gamepad.

Play DRIFTIT free Buy on Steam

Playable: works, with a catch

These all run on the Deck, and Valve says what to expect. None of the catches is a deal-breaker, but they are worth knowing before you pay.

• JDM: Japanese Drift Master ($34.99): open-world drifting in Japan with a story told through manga pages. Default controls work and it runs well by default, but some text is too small to read comfortably.
• CarX Drift Racing Online 2 ($24.99, Early Access): the sequel is the hardest of the list for the Deck so far. Valve found small text, Xbox-style prompts, and default settings that do not run well, so expect to lower the graphics. If you only want CarX on the Deck, the first game is Verified.
• Forza Horizon 5 ($59.99): not a drift game, but its drift zones are a big part of why people play it. Runs well; Valve noted that some of the default controls need attention.
• Initial Drift Online ($4.99): online touge on Japanese mountain passes, with deliveries and world rankings. Some text is small.
• Drift86 ($1.99): a cheap arcade drift game for records alone or with friends. A launcher needs the touchscreen and the prompts are not the Deck's.
• Torque Drift (free) and Torque Drift 2 ($19.99): car building, sponsors and online drift battles. The first needs an internet connection even to play alone; the second has a launcher, small text and settings to turn down.

Unsupported and unknown

• Assetto Corsa: the modding-heavy sim most PC drift servers run on is rated Unsupported ("SteamOS does not support"). Valve does not promise it runs, so buy it for the Deck only if you are ready to tinker.
• DiRT Rally 2.0: also Unsupported.
• Hashiriya Drifter ($1.99): online street drift with a car you build from a bare chassis. Valve has not tested it (Unknown), though Steam lists a native Linux build.

Side by side

Prices are Steam's US prices on 22 October 2026, before any sale. Ratings can change: after an update, a developer can ask Valve to test the game again.

Drifting well on the Deck

• Put the handbrake where your thumb already is. Most drift games put it on A or a shoulder button. If a game lets you, a back grip button (L4/R4) is ideal: you can pull it without letting go of the stick. In Steam Input this is a two-click remap per game.
• Use the triggers for throttle. Feathering the throttle is half of holding a drift, and the Deck's triggers are analog. Our drifting with a controller guide goes through stick, trigger and handbrake technique.
• Trade frames for battery. A drift game feels best when the frame rate is steady. A 40 or 45 fps cap with the matching refresh rate in the Quick Access menu is steadier, and lasts longer, than an uncapped 50-something.
• Native Linux or Proton? If a game has a native Linux build, Steam uses it; if not, Proton runs the Windows version. Both are fine on Verified games. On Playable ones, try another Proton version (game Properties → Compatibility) only if something breaks.

Which one to pick

• Drift online with other people: CarX Drift Racing Online.
• The classic, top-down, and a challenge: Absolute Drift, or DRIFTIT for short tracks and leaderboards.
• Touge on a handheld: Touge Shakai.
• Something different to do with two sticks: Inertial Drift.
• Cheap and cheerful, short sessions: Parking Garage Rally Circuit.

For the wider PC picture, see the best drift games on PC; on a Mac, drift games that run on macOS; and what is coming next, new drift games in 2026. New to drifting? Start with how to drift.

Play DRIFTIT free Buy on Steam