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Do you play non-steam games?

How many of you install games outside Steam on your Decks? Do you find the process easy?

I’m a hobbyist game developer myself, and I’m looking into making games especially designed for the Steam Deck. However, for freeware games, the $100 price per title on the Steam store is a bit too steep. I wish there was an easy-to-use alternative store on the Deck, but since that’s not the case, I’m wondering if it would make any sense to develop games for the Deck and publish them, for example, on Itch.io.

(As a proof of concept, I created this step-by-step guide for a hacky Steam Deck version of my old game, Soccer Physics. I think it still applies, even though it’s a year-old build/guide: www.ottoojala.com/soccerphysicssteamdeck/ )

mister_newbie ,

I’ll play whatever game is good, from whatever platform has the best price, provided it’s compatible.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

I only play games on Steam, GoG, or free games from Epic.

GoG and Epic are very easy to install with Heroic Games Launcher.

Bogasse ,
@Bogasse@lemmy.ml avatar

I play Dofus, both in desktop and gaming mode. The fact that a tactical turn-by-turn RPG optimized only for keyboard an mouse is playable on gaming mode feels so empowering, it certainly took some time to configure bindings though 😅

hydroptic , (edited )

So far I haven’t installed a single non-Steam game. I don’t have the energy for tinkering with things anymore, and I like the Deck because it’s easy and doesn’t require any fiddling to get things to work

emeralddawn45 ,

I’ve installed many non steam games on my deck, but the vast majority were ones I already had on my PC. I’ve found the easiest way by far is just to copy over the installed game folder to the steamdeck via ftp and add to steam. Only one game I’ve had to do any fiddling with so far, and that was just installing vcc studio dependencies with wine tricks. Other than that everything has worked with zero fiddling.

anguo ,

I do, but mostly because I had them already on a different platform, and even then I’ll procrastinate a lot before doing it. Even when the process isn’t too complicated, you lose things like community controller layouts, which is frustrating.

bjoern_tantau ,
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de avatar

The majority of the games on my Deck come from alternative sources.

oivoi OP ,

Cool! I had a hunch there’d be Deck users like you :–)

Nibodhika ,

The only games I have installed outside of Steam are emulators. Even if the majority of people here tell you they have games outside of Steam, this is likely a skewed statistics because people who tinker with their deck are more likely to join a community about it. I would guess that 70/90% of people with decks have never even opened desktop mode.

To me $100 doesn’t seem that steep, if you’re making a $5 profit with your game you only need to sell 20 extra copies for it to pay itself. If your game is specifically done for the Deck your audience is by definition on the Steam store, only a few are also outside of it.

I’m someone who uses Linux daily, I like tweaking with my deck, but realistically I never even considered installing games outside of Steam because every game I want to play is on Steam, and I imagine that several other people who tweak with their Deck are also in the same boat.

oivoi OP ,

As a hobbyist game dev, I don’t mind making games for a niche group of users, but I’m probably going to skip the idea of making games just for the Deck, as there isn’t really a platform for that kind of games. And in my case, I’m talking about freeware games; games that won’t be making that 5 dollar profit. But still, designing a game with the Deck especially in mind feels like a fun and fresh starting point to me :–)

Nibodhika ,

Yeah, in that case it makes sense not to put it on Steam.

Although in your shoes I would put it on Steam for something like $5 and free on itch. Afaik Steam doesn’t mind this as long as you don’t offer a steam key for free on itch, but if you charge the same value as on Steam you can offer a key there as well, so you could do free version on itch but a minimum of $5 to get a steam key, and sell it on steam for $5. Whatever you can sell on steam is likely to surpass the $100 margin. But I can see that as a hobbyist you might not care to setup accounts for payments etc, just want to get your game out there.

In any case I’m interested in what a game specifically designed for the Deck would look like, so please post a link when you have published it.

oivoi OP ,

Personally, I’m just not into that solo game dev career anymore, been there done that. It’d basically require for me to start up my own business again, thanks to Finnish laws. Good point about the steam keys, hadn’t thought about those at all :–)

I have no solid plans for a game specifically designed for the Deck yet, but I’m really into local multiplayer games, and do think a game that you play on a shared Deck might be cool. For example a game with just joystick controls - one stick for each player. My background is in making local multiplayer mobile games and I feel the same kind of games would work just fine on a Steam Deck, too, with the hardware controls adding new possibilities for designs.

AceFuzzLord ,

Closest I can say is installing EmuDeck on a microSD so I can emulate games on my deck. Don’t know how the process is for getting actual games outside of Steam (non-FOSS/native games outside the Discover store) working, but the process for EmuDeck is absolutely painless as you just run it, select a few things you want, and then it handles everything else.

jordanlund , (edited )
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

I bought a 2TB USB-C SSD and did a full Windows install so I can boot whatever and run whatever.

Bartsbigbugbag ,

2GB?

jordanlund ,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

Sorry, 2TB.

Bartsbigbugbag ,

No worries, figured as much.

cordlesslamp ,

What do you mean?

Are you saying I can plug in a SSD, plug in a Windows Installer USB, install the windows (with full drivers support), then choose to boot from said SSD to have a portable, fully functional Windows machine?

What if windows messed up the SteamOS partition?

jordanlund ,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

Windows doesn’t even see the Steam drive, it entirely runs from the SSD.

I used one of these:

shop.kingston.com/products/xs2000-external-ssd?va…

Install process:

Following the instructions here:

digitaltrends.com/…/how-to-install-windows-steam-…

I downloaded a Windows 11 .iso image from Microsoft:

www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11

A disk imaging tool called “Rufus”:

rufus.ie/en/

And the Windows Steam Deck Drivers:

help.steampowered.com/en/…/6121-ECCD-D643-BAA8

I did this all on a PC to prep the Kingston drive, installing to it instead of a MicroSD card.

Booting on the Steam Deck then works flawlessly. Hold down volume, tap power, wait for the beep, the boot menu appears, boot from the Kingston drive.

Windows boots in portrait mode, which is fine, that’s to be expected. You can corect it when finished.

Like any good Windows installation, it requires a few re-boots. Booting from USB though and re-starting is NOT a hard shutdown though and holding the Volume Down key through the re-boot will NOT bring you back to the boot menu. :(

So each re-start you go back to Steam OS, shut down, hold Volume Down and tap power until you hear the beep. Re-pick your Kingston drive and go back to windows.

Side note - Bumping the triggers in the boot menu will automatically boot Steam. I may have done that a few times. :)

Once your setup is done, you have a desktop and can re-set it to Landscape mode.

The one problem I had is pressing the Steam Deck button + X does NOT bring up the virtual keyboard in Windows, nor would I expect it to. Windows doesn’t know what a Steam button is.

Using the touch screen, tap and hold the task bar until you see the “Taskbar Options”, go into there and turn on the slider for “Always Show Virtual Keyboard”.

That puts a keyboard icon on the task bar so you can always access it.

I had to go into the Windows store and buy a Windows 11 license, it required me to authenticate and I couldn’t do it without a keyboard.

Furty ,
@Furty@mstdn.games avatar

@oivoi I have quite a few non-steam games installed. I've used Bottles, Lutris, and Heroic, along with EmuDeck and itch.io. I've also manually installed some fan games.

Being able to switch desktop mode and use the Deck as a decent PC (when hooked to my monitor and kb&m) is one of the reasons I was interested in the Steam Deck to begin with. Though I do enjoy tinkering almost as much as I do actually playing the games.

oivoi OP ,

I too like the fact that you can tinker with the device and make the device more personal to you, especially as the Deck is also a machine that just works, if you stick to the game mode. I feel like I get the best of two worlds.

PerogiBoi ,
@PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca avatar

I installed Sim Theme Park, Nerf Arena Blast, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone, on my deck through Desktop mode and made custom key bindings for all of them.

I run them with Proton Experimental through steam or WINE if I’m trying to play Sim Theme Park.

Found the old .ISO files on an abandonware site and went to town!

makatron ,
@makatron@mastodon.totmin.ru avatar

@oivoi Я использую Lutris 👌

gamma ,
@gamma@programming.dev avatar

A few from Itch, Parallel Launcher from Flatpak for SM64 hacks

EmDash ,

I emulate a lot of old games on my Steam Deck. It’s not too hard, but requires some work. I will do the work for non-Steam stores if/when there is something I want to play from one. However, I suspect not releasing your games on Steam will really limit your reach. My guess is that most people won’t go through the effort to get itch.io games work on thier Deck.

Telorand ,

Yep. Most are via Epic, GOG, and Amazon Games, but I’d install an itch.io game, if there was one I wanted to play.

If you’re trying to save money, instead of using it as a way to build reputation, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal to choose a cheaper option. And if you find that it becomes popular, you can maybe consider Steam later on.

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