In addition to Naughty Dog announcing it would be steam deck compatible, Valve started using it in promos for the Steam Deck. Some game news sites took this as proof that the port had Valve's approval, and that the game would launch as verified. This was repeated by people on reddit, and had me thinking it launched as verified.
I bought the Dead Space remake on Steamdeck because it was verified. 30 minutes later and I've hit the refund button. I'm cautiously optimistic about this one though.
I played it on my PS5 and really enjoyed it. (To be fair I didn't pay for it) I've tried previous games and bounced off of them. But this one stuck. If it turns out to run okay. It may be worth it if you're interested.