You don't have to enter desktop mode to launch them. You have to enter desktop mode to install them and add them as a non-steam game to your steam library so that they'll show up in handheld mode.
Makes sense. My company was recently purchased and now we're getting ready to start "working more agile". I love the idea of it helping with the structure of our team. But, I can also read between the lines.
Even then, the shaders for steam deck wouldn't work on other devices with different GPU architecture. I think it might require the same CPU architure as well. But, I'm not confident on the second part.
I have four. Idk what problems you've had?