Steam Deck Gaming News
Steam Deck Gaming News
As a preface, I used to do this a lot on Reddit. My hobby (sounds odd) was to make a little old-school-blog-style post, detailing what I found interesting in gaming in the last week or so. I got a name for it, for a time, but having long-since abandoned reddit I thought I might try the same thing here, if you'll indulge me!
This has a focus on Steam Deck, as the damn thing is my obsession. But what is appropriate for the 'Deck might be elsewhere also, and obviously is for Linux.
...again, these are my opinions, and my own poor formatting because I'm still getting used to Lemmy. So, let's get started?
EMULATION NEWS
- RetroDECK (a emulation suite known for its use on the Steam Deck system) has had a recent update and sub-sequent blog post which you can read in its entirety here! showing the recent video tutorial by Retro Game Corps on YouTube gave it a huge boost in user-base.
I'm personally thrilled with this, as I adore RetroDECK. I was a user of the far-more-popular EmuDeck for some time, but Retro won me over long ago, and I keep on pushing others to try!
- MAME 0.275 has been released: This release adds support for several arcade games on PlayStation-based hardware, a few PowerBook Duo sub-notebook computers, some hand-held LCD games, and a couple of Casio music keyboards.
You can read the blog post on MAME Dev here!
- RSPC3's founder "DH" has come back, and announced that they will be developing a port for Android phones. This looks to be a proper port, and not just encapsulating termux. Funny to see since the last week has seen a lot of dodgy builds from a lot of dodgy 'developers' for Android.
You can find the link to the GitHub page right here, if you wanna check things out
- Xbox One Emulation Well, it's not emulation, it's a compatibility layer much like Wine, but emulation as a term is far more recognizable than what it really is!
I'm only sharing this because it is fascinating to see what is possible, and what will be possible soon. This is just a video on YouTube by a creator by the name of MattKC Bytes. It's a great look at what is new, what options are available and what is happening in the scene.
A link to which is right here. Again, really recommend watching this one, it's a great video!
- Azahar (3DS) Emulator The successor to the rather popular Citra 3DS emulator has gone live now: "Starting from now, eager developers who wish to begin contributing to the project can start opening pull requests..." (and so on, it was a long statement, but you get the idea.
The GitHub page for Azahar is here
- Anbernic Not really all that relevant, but this is pretty interesting. The popular SBC retro gaming company Anbernic (SBC standing for Single Board Computer - once it was relevant to the Orange/Rasp Pi boards, but has transitioned over the years to mean primarily the Chinese retro handheld companies) has backtracked on the firmware they released for only two days which allowed users to download ROMs directly to their device. Controversial for the obvious reason, and also ironic considering the company ships thousands upon thousands of ROMs with the devices on SD cards, but that firmware has been removed now.
Obv it has been backed up elsewhere on the internet, as you can never put the genie back in the bottle! Here is a link if you want to read more/the details, but fair warning the site is pretty horrendous with pop-ups
GOG AND EPIC
What I use to play GOG (and Epic, and Amazon) games I have the tiniest Steam library, like a handful of games. The bulk of my library (thousands) is on GOG, along with the cliche of claimed Epic Games' titles most PC gamers collect each and every week.
I use a combination of Heroic Games Launcher and Junk-Store. I use Heroic on my gaming desktop, but I also use it on my Steam Deck alongside Junk-Store.
Heroic has the benefit of a partnership between the devs and GOG itself, whereby GOG game purchases made from within Heroic will give a small % of the total to the devs, and also using their affiliate link will give them a small %. This is unique, and rather amazing.
It might be no surprise, considering GOG (in)famously announced their planned native Linux support, then abandoned doing so...leaving Heroic to fill that space.
I love their UI and themes (users customizable) and that they integrate Comet for GOG - this means that playtime and achievements are logged with your GOG account, which is an obsession of mine!
Junk-Store has the benefit of running through Decky Loader, and opening up in it's own little world. It's like a Steam Deck within a Steam Deck. The thing I adore most about it is how it replicates the native Steam games library on the Deck - it feels almost native.
(the developers of both Heroic and Junk-Store are personal friends of mine, so in case it matters, thought I'd mention it!)
GOG Preservation
GOG made two announcements in the last 24 hours or so, bringing more games to their lovely games Preservation Program (if you're unaware of this program, this is a link to GOG's site detailing exactly what it is here!
- F.E.A.R. Platinum (2005) coming to the program next month "...featuring the base game and both expansions – will be available as part of the GOG Preservation Program by next month. Originally scheduled for a later timeframe, we’ve decided to accelerate this release to properly recognize Monolith’s contributions to gaming"
And more good news was seeing 11 LEGO games titles added, including 4 new titles to GOG:
- The LEGO Movie - Videogame
- The LEGO Movie 2 - videogame
- LEGO City Undercover
- The LEGO Ninjago Video Game
...these are just the titles brand-new to GOG, you can see the full list AND the whole amazingly written blog post here with this link to their site/blog
GOG also ran a billboard in Times Square, showing Dino Crisis. It's impossible to see who actually paid for this placement, could be either GOG or Capcom (most likely, in my opinion). I posted the billboard here on Lemmy if you'd like to see it
EPIC GAMES
Epic is always a little (lot) harder to write about. Despite their size, their reputation is always quite awful with PC gamers, and their news cycle seems to be quite barren - for the most part. Still, two things of note have happened, in quick-succession I'll say:
-
Dauntless, one of Epic's first exclusives is shutting down on May 29th. An (ironic) post about which was shared here on Steam, if you want to see it
-
Epic Games have their mobile app released. They're giving free games away on there, one (actually two this time) each month. The app is extremely bare-bones right now, but this month if you're interested you can grab Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic as well as the sequel for free.
I guess this is a short post, by my typical standards. There may be errors (they're my own), there may be some odd opinions (definitely my own), and there will be formatting errors (formatting here seems not-so-easy!)
But please let me know how this goes! If you'd like to see more, then please let me know, I used to adore making these. The sad thing is at least on Reddit I'd go crazy with images for each point I found, GIF's, etc. Here that's not possible, but I've peppered it with links for those curious to follow things further!
Hope you enjoy!
<3
Quality post!!! More of this please.
I had not heard about Junk-Store. A link for others: https://www.junkstore.xyz/posts/b-how-to-install-junk-store/
Great summary. Thanks!
RetroDECK (a emulation suite known for its use on the Steam Deck system) has had a recent update and sub-sequent blog post
Now that's a post!
We hope to have 0.9.1b out during next week 😅
Thanks for taking the time to put this together. I dunno if you are aware but there's also a steam deck sub here and they'd probably be happy if this was posted there too.
As a preface, I used to do this a lot on Reddit. My hobby (sounds odd) was to make a little old-school-blog-style post, detailing what I found interesting in gaming in the last week or so. I got a name for it, for a time, but having long-since abandoned reddit I thought I might try the same thing here, if you'll indulge me!
Happy to have you posting!
Agreed! There's apparently a huge ecosystem that I wasn't aware of!
People like you make lemmy great :)
Nice, thanks for all the effort, keep them coming !
This is a banger post, good work!
I like the idea of RetroDeck over EmuDeck, but a couple things hold me back.
- When an emulator goes under (a la Yuzu) does it get removed from the RetroDeck package on the next update, or does the already installed emulator stay put?
- Ryujinx has been declared legacy (no longer updated) as of RetroDeck 0.9b, but a fork of the project still continues to receive updates. EmuDeck's Ryujinx pulls from this repo, where as RetroDeck's source is dated. Is there a way to switch over within RetroDeck?
As a fellow enthusiast with an obsessive-compulsive drive to write about my hobbies (not necessarily video-game related, but quite similar) i know that these things take a while to write, especially when you take the time to format everything correctly, link the sources, etc.
So I wanted to echo the others here and say that I really appreciate your work here. It was a fun way to start my day, and I'm looking forward to your next post :)
This is so sweet of you to say!
Really, this is fun for me. Its going to take all my resolve to not do this again in 24 hours (because, over saturation!), it just makes me happy to find what interests me.
I'm lucky to have found a place like this community, where it just so happens others find that same stuff (so far!) just as interesting!
Thanks for this, made me smile!
Expected closing bracket on line 93
Thanks for a great post :-)
Dauntless, one of Epic's first exclusives is shutting down on May 29th. An (ironic) post about which was shared here on Steam, if you want to see it
I am a bit sad for what could have been. But I am not surprised at all.
The game basically always stagnated and content came way to slow. Cosmetics and the battle pass were updated regularly though. Anyway since the game was dying, they brought an "big rework" and brought the game, previously only available on Epic, to Steam.
The big rework changed most of the game into a grindfest/paywall, especially for new players. Old players were shafted as in weapons, builds, armour they spend time grinding for was removed from them to enable a "fresh start".
That obviously did not turn out well with new and old players. And now they are going to the live service game graveyard. Anyway fuck Phoenix Labs (and more specifically Forte Labs, a bunch of cryptocurrency twats who bought the former studio), another company blacklisted and I will never buy anything from again.
Oh man, thank you so much for doing this !!! I'll devour every post you make.
*ma'am!
You're so welcome! It's a bit of awful thing, writing up something like this and wondering if it's going to go down okay (for me anyway!), but that might be a lot of the typical Reddit user responses tainting my previous experiences doing this kinda thing!
I'm glad the responses are positive here, you can count on this being a regular thing <3
Same ! Thank you @[email protected].
We have a new PC3 emulator for Android now, its RSPC3
Ugh. Formatting is a nightmare.
Sorry, all.
You did amazing. Keep up the good work!
Ahhh thank you!!!!!!
Once you get the hang of Markdown, you'll enjoy it far more than Reddit's shitty syntax. You've got way more options here since they implemented a well-tested and widely used system.
Don't forget to use the formatting help link next to preview button!
Thanks for the post, really fun to read. Especially enjoyed the Steam Deck focus, as I also am obsessed with it. Haven't tried RetroDeck nor Junk Store, but sounds like I need to.
Hope you have more posts in the future :)
I promise I will be!
My only issue is somehow keeping it formatted nicely (I miss peppering these with pretty pictures and GIFs), and being able to stop!!!
And you should try both! They're very easy to install, and I absolutely swear by RetroDECK
I don't know how it's done, but I know images can be inserted. On the plus side, posts, including titles, can be edited, so any failed image attempts can be removed. This post was already enjoyable, but I'm interested in seeing how much more enjoyable it could be.
Thanks for the newsletter! I am not good with fediverse how do I like and subscribe... Your talk of emulation on the deck awoke something in me. I checked and yes, it appears you can emulate 360 on it too.
I was interested in the rest, but this has driven every other thought out of my head. I don't even know how to make breakfast in this state. I'm a wreck.
Make sure you check for a 'Xenia compatilibility list'
This is a spreadsheet showing whether any particular games are working, and how well they work. Some don't play at all, and some play perfectly!
I have 5 PS3 games installed on my Steam Deck, through RetroDECK right now that play perfectly, and a couple that required tweaks!
I do remember that Xenia (the 360 emulator!) plays Skate 3 perfectly, though!
Hmmm, I hadn't heard of Retrodeck before (or more likely, I forgot about it). How does it compare to Emudeck?
I'm honestly just jonesing for some Split/Second, looks like it's still not there yet!
Nice post! I would like to add I personnally had issues with heroic launcher for it to recognize the steamdeck inputs (in my case LotR:Return to Moria, from Epic. I tried Heroic and Lutris, Lutris is my go to on desktop). My solution was to launch the games from steam after adding them with this.
I wanna get back into gaming this year and have been looking into getting a stream deck, so timing of this post couldn't have been better. Not sure where you managed to find all this info but big thanks - looking forward to the next post...
Oh my Gosh the Steam Deck has been by far my fav gaming purchase. I was the same, rarely playing anything, looking for something new, but the convenience of this thing changed everything for me.
I adore how it plays to two strengths: for those who want a simple console-like experience, it works right away! And for those who want to tinker (me) - the sky is the limit!!
Look for my friend's work if you decide to buy one, he makes something called Decky Loader. From there the customization is endless!
Yes exactly, its the convenience of being able to play on the sofa when I get a spare hour at the weekends or evenings that's really appealing. Thanks, will check Decky Loader out 👍
Hail, fellow ex-redditor!
I had no idea until now that Junk-Store existed, probably because I'm part of the PC master race. It sounds like it's entirely for the Deck.
That is really cool that you know the Heroic devs. Tell them that it really needs a last-added sorter so we can see what was most recently added to our collective libraries.
Hello!!!
Junk-Store is a wonderful piece of software! Eben (the dev) has a background in the same field of work I am in, pen-testing. He's also a talented programmer! JS runs on the Deck, but also on Bazzite, after Kyle (Bazzite dev!) noticed his work and how well it suited things there.
Its no secret the upcoming version won't be Decky Loader dependent however, so make of that what you will!
I'll literally tell Paweł that you're a Heroic fan! And I'll pass on a link to this comment so he can see that I am praising his work wherever I go! <3
(I shared the link, hi Paweł!!!)
This is awesome! I hope you continue it in the future. It's super informative and nice way to get a feel for the going ons.
I'd like to!
At some stage this was a weekly thing for me, at least on Reddit under another username.
I focused primarily on GOG and Epic, because few users covered their news. In fact one game site offered me a job (or the beginnings of an offer) after they gained some popularity.
Regardless, I'd love to post these in a somewhat regular manner. Hard to know what I find interesting is for others, before I try it. Looks like it might be though!
Thank you so much <3
Very nice blog, also if you want to create a website for blogging, use Codeberg-pages (or Github-pages)
Another place I can recommend is NeoCities
MattKC
The Lego Island Guy mentioned
Thanks for the good post
Thanks for this. Keep em coming.
💜🔥
Great write-up, thank you!
Great post! I appreciate your work.
I looked up the Epic iPhone app, only available for EU users. Huh. Guess that's due to the Apple cut in other territories.
I believe you need to scan the QR code to install it on Apple phones!
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/mobile/ios
(and thank you, its kind of you to say!)
nice!!
I enjoyed this, thanks for posting!
This was a good read, thank you for doing this!
As far as the shutdown of the Epic game Dauntless, was any reason given for the shutdown?
Thank you so much!
It was bought by a crypto company that pushed aggressive monetization, and fired most of the original staff.
Constant nerfs to the original gameplay, invalidating months of users' grind by removing ('improving') core mechanics.
This is why the popularity dropped, but as to their official announcement, it was very short on details. Just another failed game, sadly.
Seems like I should give Junk-Store another shot I had installed it back when I was on beta branch and it was… funky. It had me sign in to Epic and then the frame / overlay wouldn’t go away, I had to force restart my Deck just to make it usable again.
I tried a few times here and there and ran into the same issue, so it’s just been sitting installed as a spooky button.
It's definitely more polished and complete now! The dev also works hard, especially if a user has any little issues, they have a Discord and Git page all where help and previous issues are detailed and worked out step-by-step on a fix. There's also a huge list on games which work via Legendary, and any tweaks users have reported to make games work are listed there on the Discord, too.
I'd be curious how you find it, after so much time has passed between the beta and now! Do update how you go! (I've shared that people have written comments here about Junk-Store, with Eben the dev (hi Eben), so I know he'll be lurking here)
