During the Christmas break from work, I spent a lot of time getting reacquainted with my Steam Deck. It’s been neglected a little of late, not least because I also recently acquired an ROG Ally.
One of the things I finally got round to doing was installing and playing around with Decky Loader, a tool for adding useful plugins into the native SteamOS experience. Of all of these, one of my favorites is Junk-Store, which has become my new favorite way to get my Epic Games library onto the Steam Deck.
This is the best way to do it, now. As much as I love the Heroic Games Launcher, by doing things this way, you remove the need for any additional launchers to play your Epic library on the Steam Deck. Here’s how to install it and how it works.
How to install Decky Loader and Junk-Store
Decky Loader is far more useful than just giving us this excellent way to access our Epic Games library, and despite being late to the party, it’s easily the number one thing I’d recommend everyone uses.
We have a full guide on how to install Decky Loader on your Steam Deck if you need help getting it set up. It’s fairly straightforward, but you will need a keyboard and mouse to make it easier, since you’ll have to do it from desktop mode. But it’s essentially as simple as downloading a file and installing it.
Once it’s all up and running on your Steam Deck, press the QAM button (the three dots) and you’ll see the new icon for Decky Loader at the bottom. Tap on this, then tap on the little icon that looks like a shop.
Search for Junk-Store and then simply tap on Install. You’ll now have the Junk-Store option inside the Decky Loader tab, so the next part is to authenticate with your Epic Games account.
If you still have a keyboard and mouse connected, you can use this. If not, you’ll need to press the Steam + X button combination to get the onscreen keyboard to show up. You’re not adding your login credentials directly into the plugin, so you don’t have to worry there, it opens the web login interface to link your account.
Once authenticated, you can start installing your games.
How to use Junk-Store to install your Epic Games library on the Steam Deck
The first time you use it, you may need to manually refresh the library to get your games to show up. Once complete, you’ll have your entire Epic Games library there to install from, without needing to open up a dedicated launcher. The whole UI feels very similar to installing from your Steam library, though with some differences. The point is that it feels native. Using another launcher on the Steam Deck is far more jarring.
Installing games is as simple as tapping the install option. There is one caveat, though. It seems that if you back out of the plugin and go and do something else on your Steam Deck, the installation will cancel, and you’ll have to do it again. It’s no major disadvantage, though.
Games don’t go into your installed tab in your library, instead going into the Non-Steam category, where anything you haven’t installed from Steam goes. You still have the same options to customize the Proton version you’re using, though, and you can also do this (and more) from within Junk-Store, too.
What you don’t get is any kind of information on how these games play on the Steam Deck. For that, I’d still recommend going to ProtonDB and checking out the community feedback.
One additional thing you might need to do is change the location of where the games install. You can’t do this on a per-game basis as with your Steam titles, but you can change from within Junk-Store’s global settings. While in the plugin, hit the Settings cog, and you’ll see an option to install either to the SSD or the microSD card.
Ultimately, though, this is the best way to integrate your Epic Games library into your Steam Deck. It will add your games straight into your main library, rather than requiring opening an additional launcher to do so. For that alone, it’s well worth getting.
