Steam Deck owners struggle to set up non-Steam software
Steam Deck owners report friction getting software beyond Steam running: graphical Nix packages need wrappers, while GOG and Epic games and EmuDeck involve extra setup. The tasks span different tools, but share a need for reliable, Deck-specific setup steps that avoid hand-written scripting and troubleshooting. A useful product would need to support a focused set of workflows and keep its instructions or automation working as SteamOS changes.
For steam Deck owners setting up non-Steam software. Mentioned from Feb 2025 to Dec 2025 on Bluesky and Hacker News.
4 different people described this problem in 3 separate discussions.
- Indie fit
- 3.0/10
- Pain
- 6.0/10
- Frequency
- 5.8/10
- Willingness to pay
- 0.0/10
- Momentum
- 5.0/10
- Who pays
- Consumers
- Competition
- Medium
- Build difficulty
- Medium
What people said
Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.
Yeah, I just went through this process myself on steam deck and the fact it can't access opengl or vulkan natively makes anything that isn't terminal based a massive pain in the ass
It's a massive pain in the ass making my gog games run on my steam deck. I keep meaning to write a script to do this to ease that pain
Build brief
See what to build and who will buy it
- 2 product ideas with the smallest useful version and pricing
- 5 places to find your first customers
- 2 more quotes from people who have this problem
- Current workarounds, existing solutions and risks