How to Play Epic Games on Steam Deck?

Released in early 2022, the Steam Deck is a handheld gaming computer designed and developed by Valve.

According to Steam themselves, the Steam Deck is “the most powerful, full-featured gaming handheld in the world”.  With a little bit of know-how, you can connect your Playstation Plus, Xbox Cloud Gaming, or even Epic Games to your Steam Deck and enjoy gaming from anywhere.

Today, we’ll be showing you how to play Epic Games on your Steam Deck by providing a step-by-step guide. Let’s get started.

Epic Games on Steam Deck

Open Desktop Mode

Before you do anything else in this guide, you will need to switch to the desktop mode on your Steam Deck. Press the Steam button and scroll down to Power. In this menu, simply press “Switch to Desktop” and you have successfully changed modes.

Please note that while in desktop mode, certain touch-screen functions will work. However, for your convenience, we recommend using the trackpad and the right and left triggers to click on the desired things.

Also keep in mind that the right trigger is a left click, while the left trigger is a right click. Inverted controls.

Install Proton

Now, we know some of you won’t like that this guide involves a third party app in order to run Epic Games on your Steam Deck. However, without it, it would be virtually impossible to make it work. As such, you will need an app called “Proton”. This is an emulator that allows Windows to run SteamOS (Linux)

To install Proton, click on Discover aka the shopping bag icon in the bottom left corner of your screen. Press Steam + X to enable  the keyboard and type in “ProtonUp”. Now simply click Install on an app called “ProtonUp-Qt”.

After this, go to your application launcher, followed by Utilities in order to launch the aforementioned app. Now click “Add Version” and select the most recent version available. Please ensure that the Compatibility Tool is set to GE-Proton. Now simply relaunch Steam.

Install Epic Games Launcher

Open your browser now, and go to the Epic Games website to download the Epic Games Launcher. You must download the Windows version. This is the file with the .msi extension.

Before installing the launcher and running it, you need to do one last thing. Open the Steam app and click “Add Game” then click on “Add Non-Steam Game”. Click browse and find the Epic Games installation file.

Once you find the installer, click add game and select it in the Steam menu. Finally, find the Epic Games Launcher in your Steam library and right click on it (left trigger) and go to Properties and then Compatibility. Select the box that says “Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool”  and then select the most recent version of Proton.

Now simply launch the Epic Games Launcher from your Steam library and follow the installation instructions.

Change Target Location

Did we say it was over? Well, sadly, there is more that you have to do in order to finish this process. Now you have to instruct Steam to run the Epic Games Launcher instead of the Installer itself. Find the Epic Games directory now. Open the Files section and click the Hamburger button to enable the option to see hidden files.

Once you enable this option, you will see gray files appear on your screen. Don’t panic, this is normal. Make your way into the folders and go to this directory: /.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata.

Now look for the most recently modified file and click on it. This is your Epic Games folder.

Now search for the following directory: /[series of numbers]/pfx/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Epic Games/Launcher/Portal/Binaries/Win32/. Once you have opened this, find the EpicGamesLauncher.exe. Right-click on it and select “copy location”.

Head back to your Steam Library and right-click on the EpicInstaller. By clicking the Steam + X buttons, pull up the keyboard and rename it into something more memorable.

You will now see a field called “Target”. Highlight everything except the quotation marks, right-click on the highlighted text, and paste in the address you copied before.

Just below, in the field called “Start In”, highlight everything except the quotes once again. Right-click and paste once more. Finally, delete the EpicGamesLauncher.exe from the end and make sure to leave the quote.

The hard part is done and now simply return to Gaming Mode from your Desktop. Launch the Epic Games store, log in and download your games. As a final note, please take into consideration that you will have to be patient and wait until the game installs as the Steam Deck cannot run this process in the background.

Running any other emulators, for example, Heroic or Lutris will put you at risk of getting banned on your Steam Deck.

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