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: https://www.ottoojala.com/soccerphysicssteamdeck/ )
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.