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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/ )

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 :–)

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.

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!

Thann ,
@Thann@lemmy.ml avatar

Beyond All Reason is FOSS, published on flatpak, and works great on the deck! (W/ keyboard, mouse, and monitor)

Contramuffin ,

I mainly use mine for emulation. So technically yes, but you’ll need to provide a way to download and install it easily

makatron ,
@makatron@mastodon.totmin.ru avatar

@oivoi Я использую Lutris 👌

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