Im currently playing a game from Epic on my Steam Deck, I’ve recently played games from GOG, and of course Steam. The biggest drawbacks with non-Steam games are having to go to the desktop to install them, and not having my time in big picture mode tracked for those games. So, not seamless, but exceptionally playable. I’ve even customized button maps for non-Steam games, and also had to do nothing at all to have them work well.
If Steam keeps extending like this, people will stop buying Windows for gaming. I will acknowledge that my gaming requirements aren’t as extensive as some, and I’ve never installed Fortnite or Roblox for my own use.
EDIT: Now, when Steam updates, sometimes that breaks the plugins, but once they are updated, it shows my Play Time again. It may not stay updated depending on you playing those non-Steam games, but I just like a general number. Even some of my PC desktop played games are wrong on the time (pause menu to get up to do something for awhile while leaving the game running.)
There are some Decky plugins for the Play Time issue you are describing! I have over 300 hours logged on ES-DE (EmulationStation Desktop Edition) that was installed through EmuDeck.
I am not currently with my Deck, but I can find the actual name for you later if you need it!
I was hoping to find a better page to share than this, but time is limited. Here is what I assume is the proper website to at least see what plugins they support. For what it is worth, I use:
CSS Loader
Pause Games
Audio Loader
Memory Deck
Animation Changer (my favorite of all of them)
SteamGridDB
PlayTime (The one I think you are looking for!)
Off topic, but I also use Synchthing (not from the Decky plugins) to get my emulation game saves all in one area, then onto my server, which is then uploaded to my cloud provider for access across all my devices. :)
Shit, these are all the things I’m looking for. Now I have something to do this weekend. Do you run SteamOS beta? I do, and it’s been pretty good, but I’m not sure how the plug-ins feel about it.
If Steam keeps extending like this, people will stop buying Windows for gaming.
Good for those people. Unfortunately, Windows has other use cases outside of gaming, and I’m not planning to switch to Linux because it won’t be able to cover those for me.
I just don’t want to see something like “Half-Life 3, built first for Steam Hardware” in an announcement five years later, and ending up having some issues on Windows because that was not a priority. So far, Valve only keeps improving their platform to hook everyone on the Steam ecosystem, but we can’t be sure of their next steps. No one is immune to increasing profit margins, even Valve.
The vast majority of the software updates they do appear to be open sourced, which makes it really hard to lock the market using anti-competitive measures. And making Linux more mainstream makes it better for everyone, not just gamers. And if Valve makes games that are optimized for their hardware spec, how is that any different than an XBox, Sony, or Nintendo game, except for the part where it will also work on other PCs without having to wait for a port?
It’s reasonable to be cautious about any actor, especially one as powerful as Valve. But nothing I’ve seen, except for the loot box stuff, has been actually anti-competitive, to the point where my GOG and Epic games work well enough on Linux these days that even the games that warn me I’m on an unsupported platform work just fine.
Im currently playing a game from Epic on my Steam Deck, I’ve recently played games from GOG, and of course Steam. The biggest drawbacks with non-Steam games are having to go to the desktop to install them, and not having my time in big picture mode tracked for those games. So, not seamless, but exceptionally playable. I’ve even customized button maps for non-Steam games, and also had to do nothing at all to have them work well.
If Steam keeps extending like this, people will stop buying Windows for gaming. I will acknowledge that my gaming requirements aren’t as extensive as some, and I’ve never installed Fortnite or Roblox for my own use.
EDIT: Now, when Steam updates, sometimes that breaks the plugins, but once they are updated, it shows my Play Time again. It may not stay updated depending on you playing those non-Steam games, but I just like a general number. Even some of my PC desktop played games are wrong on the time (pause menu to get up to do something for awhile while leaving the game running.)
There are some Decky plugins for the Play Time issue you are describing! I have over 300 hours logged on ES-DE (EmulationStation Desktop Edition) that was installed through EmuDeck.
I am not currently with my Deck, but I can find the actual name for you later if you need it!
Interesting, I’ll have to look it up. Not having times isn’t world-ending for me, but I do like having them. And achievements are nice, too.
I was hoping to find a better page to share than this, but time is limited. Here is what I assume is the proper website to at least see what plugins they support. For what it is worth, I use:
CSS Loader
Pause Games
Audio Loader
Memory Deck
Animation Changer (my favorite of all of them)
SteamGridDB
PlayTime (The one I think you are looking for!)
Off topic, but I also use Synchthing (not from the Decky plugins) to get my emulation game saves all in one area, then onto my server, which is then uploaded to my cloud provider for access across all my devices. :)
Shit, these are all the things I’m looking for. Now I have something to do this weekend. Do you run SteamOS beta? I do, and it’s been pretty good, but I’m not sure how the plug-ins feel about it.
Good for those people. Unfortunately, Windows has other use cases outside of gaming, and I’m not planning to switch to Linux because it won’t be able to cover those for me.
I just don’t want to see something like “Half-Life 3, built first for Steam Hardware” in an announcement five years later, and ending up having some issues on Windows because that was not a priority. So far, Valve only keeps improving their platform to hook everyone on the Steam ecosystem, but we can’t be sure of their next steps. No one is immune to increasing profit margins, even Valve.
The vast majority of the software updates they do appear to be open sourced, which makes it really hard to lock the market using anti-competitive measures. And making Linux more mainstream makes it better for everyone, not just gamers. And if Valve makes games that are optimized for their hardware spec, how is that any different than an XBox, Sony, or Nintendo game, except for the part where it will also work on other PCs without having to wait for a port?
It’s reasonable to be cautious about any actor, especially one as powerful as Valve. But nothing I’ve seen, except for the loot box stuff, has been actually anti-competitive, to the point where my GOG and Epic games work well enough on Linux these days that even the games that warn me I’m on an unsupported platform work just fine.