A few days ago I wrote about the Junk Store coming to Steam, a special plugin for Steam Deck to bring GOG and Epic Games compatibility unnoficially - but it seems to be a short lived idea.
It is already available as a free and open source plugin for the Decky Loader plugin system, but this was going to be completely standalone, and a paid product for the convenience of just having it right on Steam.
Even though Valve had clearly reviewed the Steam page, and so would have seen what it actually was to even allow the page to go live, it seems Valve may have backtracked on that. It's not clear though if this was done by Valve, or by the developer, the Steam page is just gone. Looking on SteamDB the note mentions "This app has been retired and is no longer available on the Steam store."
Perhaps not really surprising. While Valve do allow a lot of weird stuff on their store, a launcher that has a primary purpose of launching other games from other stores might have been a bridge too far.
I've reached out to both Valve and the Junk Store developers to find out exactly what happened, and will update if I get any reply from either party.
What is surprising is that they wanted to charge for that...
Last edited by pb on 15 October 2024 at 8:16 am UTC
Quoting: basedthe access to their stores being SOLD on Steam
My point exactly. If it wasn't taken down by Valve, it would have been taken down by someone else. It's was the only right move to nip it in the bud.
Quoting: pbValve's legal Team probably barged in the office of the Steam admins screaming "Stop this folly."Quoting: basedthe access to their stores being SOLD on Steam
My point exactly. If it wasn't taken down by Valve, it would have been taken down by someone else. It's was the only right move to nip it in the bud.
But it's interesting to think about if Valve would be willing to allow other stores at all. While it might be a bit too much, they could also see it as added value for SteamDeck/Linux to have other stores supported in an official manner. Maybe they would do it for a certain fee on sales.
But even if they get permission from other stores, it would be a whole other can of worms. Since Valve has complete control of Steam, they can tailor it to the Deck and ensure a good experience. There's no guarantee for other stores, especially without any official Linux support from any of them.
Would be interesting to see this happen if the SteamDeck gets more popular. But for now, letting the community support it without any affiliation is probably the best approach.
Quoting: based[...] nor the access to their stores being SOLD on SteamBut that is not what's happening. It is not that access to their stores is being sold on Steam, it is that easier access to their stores is being sold on Steam. And I don't think that should be a problem at all, because you can just as well access their stores any other way you see fit. They could even provide their own software to help with that, if they wanted to.
Quoting: TheRiddickNot really sure what the issue is since you can add non-steam games to Steam library and also run them with proton.Convenience. Not having to do it manually through Heroic or so. Sure, it's only one or two extra steps, yet the less you need to do on your own, the easier.
Works great through Decky anyway!
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