One of the most interesting features of the Epic Games Store (EGS) is the weekly free game. During the holidays, it was a game a day – I hope you picked up Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy! EGS has a slew of different games than Steam, which has it’s own pros and cons. Ubisoft has first pick with EGS, and Alan Wake 2 is only found there. If you have a PC, no real big deal here running 2 different storefronts.

And yet, EGS does have some rather glaring issues. I won’t get into the overall maturity of the storefront, it’s clear that Steam has years and years of experience here. I don’t mean trading cards here, I mean just basic configuration options. I use a Dual Sense controller on PC, that simply will not work with EGS, so I “sideload” EGS through Steam and it works better.

Now, I’ve been signing praises of the Steam Deck for nearly a year. Any pick up and go game plays wonderfully on the Deck, Metroidvanias absolutely shine. Some games, where you truly want an immersive experience are better on the PC (Alan Wake 2 is a great example), but you’d truly be surprised as how awesome the experience truly is. Given Steam’s bajillion title library, this generally works.

Where stuff gets LESS fun is when you’re integrating into something that isn’t on Steam. EGS is the main culprit here, as other launchers generally don’t do well with handheld gaming (GOG, ActiBlizz and so on). You need to figure out how to get EGS into the Deck, then ensure the games themselves can be played with a different overlay. There are dozens of ways to get there, and they all boil down to sideloading launchers. Some are insanely complicated, others a bit easier to get through. You can try this integrated tool that integrates it all fairly well: https://github.com/moraroy/NonSteamLaunchers-On-Steam-Deck/releases

• Steam Desktop mode (hold the power button for 5 seconds)
• Download a browser (I used Firefox), click the above link, download the first asset
• Look in downloaded items, execute the file
• Select the launcher you want to use, watch it download. 
• Load the launcher while still in desktop mode to finalize some configs, such as logon
• Once it’s working, go back to handheld mode

And that’s pretty much it. You just load the launcher from the Steam interface and everything works. Well, sort of. Anything that has a dual launcher (like Ubisoft Connect, loaded through EGS, loaded through Steam) is going to be more painful to navigate through, but it will still work. And loading it through this convoluted way should ensure that cloud-based saves also work.

This is one of the few parts that the Nintendo Switch ecosystem does a great job at managing. Everything just plain works. But, if you want access to pretty much any PC game in the last 20 years, and play on the go, the Steam Deck is without hesitation, the best way to get there.