Description of issue
I know that FM23 is not officially supported for Steam Deck, however there are a few issues that prevent the game from being playable in the current state. The biggest is the inability to invoke the on-screen keyboard when playing with the hand held device (ie. without a connected bluetooth keyboard or mouse). Many users will need this functionality e.g. when traveling (when the device cannot be docked or other peripherals cannot be used).
Clicking on a text field using the touch screen is not possible. If the Steam Deck's trackpad is used as a mouse, it is possible to click using the mouse into a text field for the user to input text. However, in neither case is the on-screen keyboard invoked.
It is possible to invoke the on-screen keyboard using the Steam shortcut (STEAM+X), however the unexpected action in the game which is certainly a bug is that when the keyboard is invoked using this key combination, the text field is then no longer selected and there is no way to input text.
In some screens (e.g. manager setup), while this is annoying it is not an unsurmountable issue as the user can simply use the TAB button on the on-screen keyboard to circle back around to the fields that require input.
However, in the main part of the game, the only field requiring text input is the search bar. When the search bar is selected and the on-screen keyboard is invoked, it becomes impossible to input text into the search bar. At this stage it is not possible to TAB back, because the tab functionality of course cycles through other in-game screens (e.g. squad, tactics, etc). This bug alone makes it completely impossible to play the game on the platform.
Based on my experience on the manager setup screen, it would appear that the bug may be that when the keyboard is invoked, the game tabs to the next field. For example, when clicking on the text field to input my manager's First Name, invoking the on-screen keyboard automatically tabbed forward to the Last Name field. I then had to fill in the rest of the text fields and drop down menus before continuing to tab until the field for First Name was selected to fill in. As there is no "next field" after the search bar, the keyboard is invoked but has nowhere to input text, and so the user will type with no output other than tabbing/arrowing through screens or using the space bar to progress the game.
I don't think SI needs to Steam officially certify the game for Steam Deck in order to make it playable, but I would certainly question UI/UX issues like this that make the game impossible to use on what is quickly becoming one of the most popular PC platforms. There are plenty of other games that are not officially supported, but the keyboard functionality works correctly with users able to click into text fields and type using the STEAM+X keyboard shortcut, and FM23 is the only unsupported title I've tried that has any issue with text input.
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