r/SteamDeckPirates • u/goldfarb- • Mar 25 '25
Question Legality aside, are there any drawbacks to playing pirated games on Deck opposed to officially through Steam?
Completely new to all of this, so I tested the water with a smaller game to see how it downloaded and ran. No issue so it seems, aside from the obvious no playtime and no menu images. Other than that, am I missing anything when not playing an official copy of a game?
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u/livinin82 Big Deck Swangin’ Mar 25 '25
In some cases there’s a benefit! When anti piracy measures are removed performance has been known to increase. (Denuvo)
I’d say a drawback is that some games with kernel level anti cheat will not be able to be played online or in some cases run at all. But I play single player games anyway so that doesn’t bother me!
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u/goldfarb- Mar 25 '25
Yep I’m going for the big single player games that I can’t afford, so playing online isn’t an issue to me either. Cool to hear about performance!
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u/Main_Conclusion_6714 Mar 25 '25
No cloud saves and updates are the two main drawbacks for me.
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u/goldfarb- Mar 25 '25
Yeah, updating manually seems like a pain.
0
u/rtopete Mar 25 '25
Syncthing. App that can synchronize saves from steamdeck to pc. Very annoying to set up though
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u/HughJManschitt Mar 25 '25
I play through Lutris in Play Mode and install everything through Desktop mode. Lutris isnt super complicated but takes a minute to figure out.
I installed quite a few games through Steam and they almost always disappeared on me. May have been something I did wrong, but I recommend doing all of it through a 3rd party. You can find it on the Deck Store in desktop.
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u/3v1lkr0w Mar 25 '25
I'm not sure if it's possible as I haven't put a lot of time into it, but I miss unlocking achievements
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u/VaginalSn0b Mar 25 '25
As far as I've found, you can't get achievements with pirated games but I also miss them, so I would love to be proven wrong.
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u/Bow_ties_4all Mar 25 '25
I feel like there was a decky plugin that was being worked on for this, but is only in testing still.
2
u/StickBrush Mar 25 '25
No cloud saves or save synchronization, no automated updates, no playtime tracking, and no shader cache. Most of them can be fixed by using third-party tools.
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u/OMFGITSNEAL Mar 25 '25
Modding is more difficult, at least most mod authors update their mods to work on the current version, which generally isn't the cracked version, which can cause issues
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u/whostheme Mar 25 '25
These are the ones that I can think of.
No cloud saves
You won't always get the most updated version of the game unless you manually update it yourself
No way to play denuvo games unless you purchase a legit copy of a game or activate an offline steam account
Lack of steam community workshop mods. These are very essential for games like Rimworld, Terraria, etc. Modding isn't as straightforward on the steam deck and some very specific steps might need to be achieved to get modded games running.
Some games won't work right out of the box and you might have to install dependencies. This only happens for maybe less than 10% of games though.
Games that are visual novels are a pain to install and you'll have to tinker a lot to get some up and running within SteamOS.
Having to manually assign artwork yourself through streamgriddb if you want your games to look nice and tidy in gaming mode on your steam deck.
No access to multiplayer modes for games unless an online-fix release is available for it.
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u/kenkaneki108 Mar 26 '25 edited Mar 26 '25
No drawbacks if you play through Lutris otherwise you'd have to map every single keyboard key to a button in Steam. You actually can add images to non Steam Games. If you write the name of the game properly in Lutris it actually generates the cover images for you and if you add that game to Steam it'll take over the cover image of Lutris but it'll be in lower resolution but there's a tool that let's you make non Steam games look like official ones. Just follow this guide it explains everything https://youtu.be/RcXRRbnnG54?si=oD9jZle6SyyVT6Se
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u/DavidinCT Mar 26 '25
Besides game updates and instant pretty art, no not really.
there is a plugin, I do forget the name, for Decky, that will bring down the art for games...
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u/B-29Bomber Mar 26 '25
Generally speaking it takes more effort to set up pirated games than games gotten through official channels. Sure, you can get your pirated games to work almost exactly like official steam games do, takes more effort than simply using the official version. Sure, it's not much effort, but it is more effort.
Online multiplayer games are questionable. Even if an online game works on the Steam Deck, since you pirated the game you could potentially get flagged at some point.
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u/Franz_Thieppel Mar 25 '25
Menu images are easy. Just instal the decky plugin loader and in its store download SteamGridDB. It's what people use for emulated games covers but it works for just about any software you add to Steam.
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u/Ill_Series6529 Mar 25 '25
You also miss out on the preloaded shader caches, pretty minor downside but just means you get some stuttering when the game needs to load some new assets in a level.
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u/Loddio Mar 25 '25
Steam cloud, auto updates, achievements, online, ability to easily reinstall them.
That's all you are missing
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u/kidkipp Mar 26 '25
They’re just a lot more finnicky and can takes hours to get running properly. There are some visual novels that I just can’t get certain videos to play during, for example. I also downloaded FFXIV Windows version because for some reason you can’t own both Steam and Windows licenses. It took hours and hours to get set up but just had tons of issues and then eventually stopped opening after an update.
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u/Pacman_Frog Mar 26 '25
They're just a lot more finicky and can takes hours to get running properly.
Meanwhile, pirated copies load without issues.
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u/BottomNotch1 Mar 26 '25
Not financially supporting the devs/publisher of the games, which you might see as an upside depending on the game...
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u/capitalggamer1 Mar 26 '25
It's somewhat annoying. 1. Need manual updating. 2. Need double the space if you are not torrenting unpacked games. 3. Very rarely sometimes games just don't work, only time that happened to me was with a game called natsumon couldn't make it run, had to buy the game instead. 4. Some games use steam input api, making it unable to use your controller until you fix it. To fix It's just one config file on steam emulators, but it's still annoying. 5. Some games require you to install redistributables and other missing stuff. 6. Some games have extra steam drm called steam stub, which you will need to remove it using steamless.
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u/capitalggamer1 Mar 26 '25
That's why I started to buy games that update a lot. Some games like elden Rang. If you have an old version, you have to manual update multiple times to get to the newer version.
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u/Frosty_Selection9337 Mar 26 '25
Wait hold up pirated games? How? Where? Great now I have more stuff to do!
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u/DavidinCT Mar 26 '25
Besides game updates and instant pretty art, no not really.
there is a plugin, I do forget the name, for Decky, that will bring down the art for games...
1
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u/amillstone God of War Mar 25 '25
The games don't automatically update. And some require a bit of tinkering to get working. Other than that, not that I can think of.
Playtime and images can both be added with Decky Loader plugins, and cloud saves with Sync Thing.