As easy as taking candy from a megacorp’s intellectual property

Rough Procedure:

1. Download game of choice from fitgirl-repacks dot site from a separate (linux) computer. (Dont forget to seed folks!)

2. Install it via lutris. I installed it on my linux PC so Lutris will automatically create a directory under ~/Games

3. After fitgirl is done with her magic, take the entire directory installed under ~/Games, copy it over to a USB, and transfer it to your steam deck. You would probably need a USB to USB-C adapter for this one.

If you have no such adapter, no worries. What you could do is in desktop mode, install Decky, and from Decky install the terminal plugin (or you can skip installing Decky entirely and just use the terminal from desktop mode. But Decky is a really good plugin and want an excuse for more people to try it out!). SteamOS is by default an immutable distro so you can’t mess around outside your home directory unless you invoke some special linux incantations. Here is the procedure for that: https://christitus.com/unlock-steam-deck/

After you unlock & install the terminal on your steam deck, install and start openssh daemon so your steam deck can be an ssh server so other pcs on your local network can ssh into your steamdeck. From the top of my head the command should be:

sudo pacman -S openssh

sudo systemctl start sshd.service

Or something like that idk 🤷

After that do an “ifconfig” on your terminal emulator on the steam deck to find out the local address of your steam deck (should be something like 10.x.x.x, or 192.168.x.x or something (basically search up what an internal ip should look like)). After you successfully ascertain such code, try to ssh in to your steam deck, and if you can, do an rsync from your PC. (rsync -rl —progress ‘installed game directory’ deck@‘steamdeck internal ip’:/home/deck/Games)

Ok now that it’s done rsyncing, open up steam from desktop mode in your steamdeck, add non-steam game, and choose the exe file in your installed game folder. (Remember when installing from fitgirl, you can choose where to place the game directory? That should be where it is).

Ok now that’s done, try running it and see if it works. Ez. If you want community game layouts set up, copy & paste the game code from steam db as the “Shortcut Name” of your game, and community layouts should show up

Next steps are optional, but basically your installed game will just be blank in your steam library when you play it, so here are the steps to make piracy more ✨a e s t h e t i c✨

Remember you installed decky? Install the steamgriddb plugin from it, and highlight your new non-steam game, and there should be an option called “changed artwork” when you press the three horizontal line button on ur steam deck. Go ham.

Anyway here are the rough details of how i was able to make it work. Ive only tested it with fitgirl but theres no reason other repacks wont work.