The pre-load issue on Steam Deck is becoming more and more of a problem and with big game releases coming, we feel that we should warn you not to pre-load on Steam Deck unless you have a slow internet connection.
In our tests, Forspoken took 2 hours to unpack it's pre-load on Steam Deck that was downloaded ahead of the game's release.
For reference, the PC unpacking took around 20 minutes.
Forspoken Unpacking took 2 hrs
Forspoken download after game release took 1 hour and 7 mins.
So there you have it, as it stands it took half the time to download the game once it was released rather than pre-download it and wait twice as long for it to unpack and verify.
For now, Don't Pre-Load, unless you have slow internet of course then it most likely will take around the same time.