Yes, though it's increasingly rare because most game developers would rather just integrate with Steam than setup their own account and payment systems ... and I can hardly blame them.

A prime example is Andrew Gower's new game. The dude started Jagex and RuneScape he surely could make a new account system, billing system, etc for Brighter Shores ... he has all the experience necessary at a scale few developers have the experience with. He's just opting not to and it's surely because Steam's offering in terms of game promotion and ease of access is unparalleled.

Not a SD user, but a desktop gamer who found your post. I wouldn't be surprised to see people on the fediverse say they often play games outside of Steam.

The non-techy people I know treat the thing like a console and refuse to use desktop mode for games. That's the catch of the Steam Deck. It runs Linux underneath, but most people never (want to) interact with it. I love it for what it does for Linux gaming but there's more to PC gaming than just Steam - Although I'm aware that Steam probably underprices these with hopes to recoup the loss back on Steam purchases.

(Also your method isn't really hacky, that's just kind of how binary executables work in Linux, plus the steps to add it to Steam)

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.

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.

I got WoW and D4 to work great through battle.net.

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

No. I'm technical enough to figure out how, but way too lazy to bother.

I've installed games from itch.io, and it's about as easy as on windows.

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

@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.

I use regularly Lutris, Bottles, ScummVM, Dosbox-X or EmulationStation. So I can play from GOG, Epic, Itch.Io or plain old games (Dos) / emulated.

I do have many titles on Steam as well and generally I don't look too much at whether something is verified or platinum on ProtonDB, I just avoid titles from companies like Activision, EA, Ubisoft and generally all works very easily or easy enough!

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 😅

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

@oivoi Я использую Lutris 👌

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