Steam Deck

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/steamdeck by /u/AdamAnderson320 on 2025-06-22 19:16:48+00:00.

I just did this recently and most of the guides I found were out of date or incomplete, so this is my attempt to gather all the latest things I learned during my journey into one reference, for those who come after. I'm going to give the big-picture steps here. If you don't know how to do any particular one, you should be able to look that part up elsewhere.

1. Switch to Desktop Mode
2. Launch the Discover application and search for "Heroic"
3. Click the result for Heroic Games Launcher and install it
4. Launch Heroic Games Launcher
5. Log in to your Epic, GoG, and/or Amazon accounts in Heroic
6. Go to the Wine Manager tab and install GE-Proton-Latest. If you skip this or the next step, you may have trouble with controller detection later.
7. After GE-Proton-Latest is installed, go to Settings
   1. Under General, enable "Add desktop shortcuts automatically" and "Add games to Steam automatically"
   2. Under Game Defaults, set Wine Version to GE-Proton-Latest
8. Install any game from your library.
   1. You'll see a pop-up saying that the game won't appear in Steam until you restart it. From what I can tell, the only way for this to happen is to actually restart your entire Deck.
   2. If that doesn't work or you don't want to restart, you can add it manually. Open Steam in desktop mode, navigate to your Library, then click the "+" on the bottom left and select "Add non-Steam game...". From there you can select the game via the shortcut that Heroic automatically created.
9. Now you can go back to Gaming Mode
10. In your library, go to the "Non-Steam games" section. Before you try to launch the game, open Properties, go to the Controller tab, and select "Disable Steam Input" the menu there. From what I've read, Heroic's distribution as a Flatpak and Flatpak's sandboxing cause problems with Steam Input specifically. However, you can still select a controller template from the controller preferences and that has an effect. I just don't think you can do any customizations.
11. Now you can launch your game and the controls should work. In my experience, you must both use GE-Proton and disable Steam Input or else the controller won't be recognized.
12. (Optional) You can add Heroic itself as a non-Steam game and manage and launch your games all that way if you like, but it's not required.
13. (Optional) If you add non-Steam games manually, they will show up as empty tiles in the UI. Very unappealing. You can fix this with the following additional steps:
    1. Install Decky. Just search how to do this if you don't know, there are great guides out there and the process is pretty simple.
    2. With Decky installed, open it from the Quick Access menu and select the little icon that looks a bit like a storefront. Search for SteamGridDB and install it.
    3. With that installed, you can now customize artwork for any title by selecting it and pressing the menu button (top left, with three parallel lines), then selecting the menu item that says "Customize Artwork". You'll be able to select from a gallery of official and fan-made artwork for the game you have selected.
    4. If you haven't installed Decky already and you're wondering what other plugins in their store might be worthwhile, I think the following are of general interest: ProtonDB Badges (shows ProtonDB compatibility); HTLB (shows How Long To Beat stats); and Is There Any Deal (in the Steam Store, shows if the selected game is on sale anywhere else).

Hope this helps someone!