I’ve got a substantial library of games on GOG and Epic that I wanted to play on the Steam Deck, and I’ve used the Heroic Launcher with some success to access a lot of my libraries on those two platforms, but managing the compatibility per game is a bit frustrating and sometimes after an update things break.
Can anyone else share any success or failure stories here? The only other place I’ve seen this discussion was on Steam itself and I wanted a non-steam take on the practice of running non-steam platform games and what works.
I normally check online to see if a particular Epic or GOG games is compatible with the Steam Deck before using Heroic to install it, but following that, I haven’t run into any big issues with getting the game to run with the latest Proton version. Though I suspect some games do work better on an older build.
I think the strange thing is when a game is listed as Steam deck compatible and the same exact game on GOG doesn’t work with the latest Proton.
You mean listed on Steam as being SD compatible? Yeah, I expect Steam adds a little bit of secret sauce to get their hosted titles working correctly. I’ll check online resources that specifically target Epic and GOG game compatibility.
I’ve had mixed success, but probably mostly as a result of it just being fussier to use Heroic and Lutris. Expect to go look up the game on ProtonDB and pay with settings.
Also, the downloading is less robust. I know with Cyberpunk 2077 from GoG, it took several tries before it downloaded successfully.
Overall, the experience of playing a Deck verified Steam game vs. the same game from GoG is like day and… dusk. It works, sometimes with little intervention, but expect to fiddle more.
As an aside, GoG should just support Heroic or Lutris development, and get them to have some streamlined “Community Settings” feature, letting Heroic or Lutris pull and apply an automated settings file.
Maybe a dumb question, but how do I go about getting heroic launcher on the deck?
Switch to desktop mode, go to the discover store, it’s in there.
Not a dumb question at all. I see it’s already answered, but I’ll add a little detail.
It’s functionality that is readily accessed, but Steam doesn’t really advertise it. Desktop mode is very useful, and accessing it is a first step to unlocking lots of the Deck’s potential. Assuming you (or anyone who finds this later) have never used the Desktop mode, I’ll give a brief overview.
I recommend having a USB-C hub/dock so you can connect to an external keyboard and mouse, but it’s not necessary. The right track pad along with the trigger switches will work as a mouse, and the Steam + X will still bring up an on-screen keyboard.
To switch to desktop mode:
- Press the “Steam” button, select “Power”, select “Switch to Desktop”, wait while the Deck reboots into desktop mode.
- You will be presented with a fairly typical (Linux) desktop environment. In the lower left the Steam Deck icon opens a “Start”-like launcher menu. Next to the launcher icon, there should be Firefox, System Settings, Discover, and Dolphin shortcuts.
- Using a mouse or the right trackpad, click the Discover icon, this will launch the Discover application, which is kind of like the software store. You can search for Heroic and Lutris using the search field in the upper left.
With desktop mode, you can also install LibreOffice and use that keyboard and mouse to get some work done. Heck, install an IDE, graphics editing software, whatever.
You will need to return to desktop mode and Discover to update the software installed with Discover (unless you use AutoFlatpaks with Decky loader).
I played a few games from both Epic and GoG with success. I use Lutris and install the games in the desktop mode. Checking first on lutris web site helps with managing the expectations. Not having community layouts is a bit of a bummer but I add a few of my adjustments if needed. Also note that, I am not talking about AAA, heavily optimized, or online games.
If you add the games to Steam you can often already find community layouts. It just depends on the game name.
Like the other commenter said, maintaining login session is a bit of a pain (particularly where online functionality is important in the gaming experience like Death Stranding) but it mostly works.
Cloud Save is definitely one of the big flaws. I barely salvaged my Death Stranding save after a Proton version switch (DO NOT do this for a game you have a lot of saves with), because Heroic doesn’t do automatic cloud Save (or maybe it does but it’s Beta? I don’t recall).
EGS logs itself out on windows desktops all the time too. Just terrible software and annoying.
Only some games support cloud saves on Epic. Strictly speaking this is also the case on Steam, but games without cloud saves there seem rather rare.
Heroic for Epic, Lutris for GoG, this approach worked best for me so far, I ran into issues when trying to run both stores in one application.
Can you add the games from lutris/heroic to steam as non-steam games?
You have a third party app, boilr which do it, or a setting in heroic.
I tried boiler and couldn’t figure it out. It seemed easier to just right click the exe and hit add to steam
I haven’t had a GOG game yet that doesn’t run using the Heroic Launcher. Game save syncing does work mostly, but only for games running under Proton. Native games won’t sync saves without scripting work on your part.
The one problem I’ve had and haven’t seen mentioned on this thread yet is that GOG games installed through Heroic and then launched through the Steam game mode can be so slow. Like, launching No Man’s Sky could take 5 to 10 minutes spinning on the Steam logo before actually launching. I heard one person online say it could be due to Heroic not setting up pre-compiled resources on first launch? I dunno. I’d be open to suggestions.
I was trying to play Wildfire via Heroic Launcher on GOG and all it gave me was a weird tex2d function not found error. Unsure how to proceed. Although Proton community seems to indicate that Wildfire works perfectly on Steam deck with latest Proton. Not sure where the disconnect is.
This is the biggest reason for me considering wiping my steam deck and installing windows. I know that’s heresy in this community but, honestly, I don’t give two shits about my OS, I just want to play the games. If using the touch pad and a set of desktop icons (which is how my desktop pc is configured) works, fine. I’ve never owned a console and don’t need the console experience.
For now I have more Steam backlog than I can play, but when I get around to swapping the SSD…well , I’ll burn that bridge when I get there.
I have windows 10 installed on a micro SD card for those games that simply won’t play nice with steam OS, but I find myself using it less and less
wiping my steam deck and installing windows. I know that’s heresy in this community but, honestly, I don’t give two shits about my OS
Can you please explain why you think this would be heresy? Because, for example, if you hypothetically figured out a way to install MacOS on the thing, you’d be applauded. No one cares what OS you installed on it.
They are probably talking about the attitude r/SteamDeck had about installing Windows. Anything even mentioning that was often downvoted to oblivion. And since Lemmy users are probably more open to open source software they were expecting that to be the case here as well.
Personally I am done with Windows. I won’t install it on my Steam Deck or my desktop PC. But I see why someone would want to do that. If I were to install Windows on my Deck because of some multiplayer games or so I would probably not even dual boot and instead focus on making the experience on Windows as good as possible.
I really don’t like the Mac os experience but I would try this just because
I’ve used Lutris in the past to good success. Add as non-steam game then look for community control profiles. Also protondb for game settings that may improve performance. I’ll be honest, I’ve been fairly limited with GoG and Epic games.
Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition worked well, just a bit small on the screen. Using the touch pad was just fine since that game loves mouse controls.
I have had pretty good success with Heroic and Alien Isolation, which was one of their free games. BUT, I didn’t play for a while and heroic was logged out and I am having difficulty logging back in and getting it working again.
Try using alternative login method, login issue is not platform related. I have very same experience on PC.
Try using alternative login method, login issue is not platform related. I have very same experience on PC.
Disclaimer: I haven’t tried it.
BUT: I’m both a Deck user and Linux desktop gamer. I believe you should be able to install Epic and GOG both (the launchers) as non-Steam apps, and then they each get installed to fresh Proton prefixes in Steam. No additional tools should be needed besides Steam itself.
I think you can still select a default install location for their games too, since you do get Linux file system access from the prefix (it’s mounted as drive Z).
I’d probably run them both using Proton Experimental, since it tends to be better with other launchers. Or, a later version of Glorious Eggroll. The cases where something doesn’t run on GE or Experimental (but does work with some other Proton version) should be extremely minimal, so using one of those for the whole shebang should give good results. You can freely change the Proton version for the whole launcher if something gives you trouble.
Yes there are other solutions (Heroic, Lutris), but ultimately this should work as well with fewer components. I use this approach for Ubi games that use their daft launcher.
I use Lutris for everything because I am already used to that from my desktop PC. It has installers for most games that would download the needed dependencies and make necessary configuration changes.
I’ve played a couple of games via Heroic, the only problem I’ve noticed is that sometimes Epic will half log itself out, but you just need to open up Heroic and it’ll log itself back in. Use ProtonDB to check compatibility and running non-Steam games is pretty straightforward!
