Tutorial  Updated

An Extremely Noob-Friendly Guide to Playing Steam Games On Switch (Please Read The Forward)

Okay, so until this guide gets removed, some backstory.

I created this when I was screwing around with Bionic, and had very little clue on upgrading L4T Linux. Basically, I just pieced together info I got from nvidia support threads, along with whatever I could find from any other source. I haven't really though about this guide in a bit, but I came across something better and forgot about the post I made. While this "technically" worked back in the Bionic days before I realized there was a Discord, it's been brought to my attention that this method can be risky for some users (not to mention, it doesn't work at all on Jammy anyway). That being said, until TheOfficialGman gives the all-green to nuke this thread, I'll leave this info here: DO NOT FOLLOW THE GUIDE IF YOU HAVE IT BACKED UP! IT IS OLD, OUTDATED, AND EVEN WHEN IT WASN'T, IT WAS/STILL IS RISKY!
Instead, I'll leave the link to the switchroot discord, although you can find it easily on the switchroot wiki pages (don't know how I missed it the first time):

https://discord.gg/53mtKYt
https://switchroot.org/
 
Last edited by TiredNModding7,

Askmin

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I've had that problem in a couple of games. Compatibility is kind of hit-or-miss at this point, but there are some possible workarounds. If you right click on the game, and properties, you'll see the general tab. In the original post, there's a section that talks about "launch options". You can try using the "PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%" launch option (no quotes), and see if that works (or fool around with other launch options found in one of the links provided). There's also a compatibility tab, where you can try making that specific game run in another version of Proton. On that note you can also look into ProtonGE, which has other Proton versions that might work, though I'd recommend forcing compatibility rather than changing Proton's all-over version (just in case things don't work out). In all cases, your mileage will vary (in all honesty, some games will just not work, or be stuck in a "launching" loop). I think further down the road, the Switchroot group may find some more managable way(s), but until then, that's all I could find.
Okay, thank you very much for helping me!
I'll try some configs to see if I can get it to run.


Can you show me the logs?
Sure, but I don't know what logs you're talking about.
 

hippy dave

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Thanks for this, I always thought running PC games through CPU emulation would be too slow to bother with, but having seen people have mild success with AAA 3D games, I decided it might be worth a go for the low-spec indie puzzle games I like to play.

I definitely didn't make my linux partition big enough :tpi: so I might have to redo it, but of the first few games I tried, some didn't start but the couple that did run really well, Stephen's Sausage Roll and Hue. I'm having a control issue with Hue, even once I've disabled the overlay thing by pressing the screenshot button (re: joycon section of this page), the right joystick only registers in up & down directions, not all around, which is needed for the game's colour wheel. Can be worked around by using the touchscreen as a mouse pointer, but hopefully I can find a fix.

The ones that didn't start were Recursed and Snakebird Primer, both 2D games but so is Hue. LMK if anyone has any ideas.

Oh yeah other little issue I noticed, at some point while running the nvidia update steps from the guide, the joycons icon in the menu bar at the top of the screen was replaced with an nvidia icon, and now its menu doesn't have the reboot to payload option. Any easy way to get that back? TY.
 

Randomguylol

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Any interesting game that runs well?
Ultrakill?
Post automatically merged:

Thanks for this, I always thought running PC games through CPU emulation would be too slow to bother with, but having seen people have mild success with AAA 3D games, I decided it might be worth a go for the low-spec indie puzzle games I like to play.

I definitely didn't make my linux partition big enough :tpi: so I might have to redo it, but of the first few games I tried, some didn't start but the couple that did run really well, Stephen's Sausage Roll and Hue. I'm having a control issue with Hue, even once I've disabled the overlay thing by pressing the screenshot button (re: joycon section of this page), the right joystick only registers in up & down directions, not all around, which is needed for the game's colour wheel. Can be worked around by using the touchscreen as a mouse pointer, but hopefully I can find a fix.

The ones that didn't start were Recursed and Snakebird Primer, both 2D games but so is Hue. LMK if anyone has any ideas.

Oh yeah other little issue I noticed, at some point while running the nvidia update steps from the guide, the joycons icon in the menu bar at the top of the screen was replaced with an nvidia icon, and now its menu doesn't have the reboot to payload option. Any easy way to get that back? TY.
Restart your switch maybe 🤔
 
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hippy dave

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So I redid this with a bigger partition. I still lost the joycons icon with the reboot to payload menu option, but that's ok because now I used this which does the same thing, and locked its icon to the launcher on the left for easy access.

I'm having mixed success with which Steam games start or not, but the ones that do start have been running brilliantly, as mentioned they're indie puzzle games that aren't demanding on the CPU at all, so they might take a while to load but then happily run full speed. Stuff like Snakebird, Hexcells Infinite etc.

One game I tried that was technically a Steam game but I have a cracked Windows copy with supplied Steam emulator dll files, is Void Stranger. I tried adding it as an external game to Steam and running it that way, but it didn't start, however running it via wine from the command line (or script) works perfectly. I'm gonna try doing that or reading the links in OP for ideas about how to get other stuff running, but even if some stuff won't work, this has already proved worth doing for the stuff that does.
 

Alex_p

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thank you for the tutorial, it was fun. got to try out some Half Life 2 at least, even if doesn't run too well it was still interesting to see. hope we will get official ports of it soon
 

Gheovgos

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anyone had black screen issue? I tried to boot Oblivion, it runs but I see a black screen, how to fix that?

EDIT: fixed updating everything
 
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twisty24

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Do you know if you can still retain the Nintendo switch software and do a dual boot, or is it just the Linux kernal?
 

TiredNModding7

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Do you know if you can still retain the Nintendo switch software and do a dual boot, or is it just the Linux kernal?
If you're talking about the stock Switch firmware, custom firmware, or even Android, then the answer is yes. Linux (and the other custom images) can only work by launching via Hekate. In Hekate, if you go to the tools section, you will see a button that says "partition SD card". From there, you can choose to partition the SD card to include partitions for Android, Linux, etc. See the switchroot wiki for more info on partitioning and setting up various images:

https://wiki.switchroot.org/wiki/

After you partition the SD card and flash whatever you wanted on there, go back to the main Hekate screen. From there, select "more configs", and the other images you set up on other partitions should be there; all you have to do is tap on the one you want. If you want to go back to stock, go back into Hekate and tap "reboot"; there should be an option to reboot to stock. Also, rebooting from whatever OS/Partition you are in should work (and if not, holding the power button down for 12-13 seconds for a hard power-off and turning on again will do as a last-resort option). From my understanding, all of this takes place from the SD card; none of the stock firmware is overwritten (at least as as far as I know or have seen/experienced).
 

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I followed everything here, and when i open steam it says "Verifying installation" and then closes and does not do anything. I waited like half an hour and nothing happened. Did i do something wrong?

Edit: I used a fresh install of ubuntu on my switch for this, there shouldn't be any other program that is messing something up.
 

Randomguylol

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I followed everything here, and when i open steam it says "Verifying installation" and then closes and does not do anything. I waited like half an hour and nothing happened. Did i do something wrong?

Edit: I used a fresh install of ubuntu on my switch for this, there shouldn't be any other program that is messing something up.
Can you send me your terminal logs?
 

TiredNModding7

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I followed everything here, and when i open steam it says "Verifying installation" and then closes and does not do anything. I waited like half an hour and nothing happened. Did i do something wrong?

Edit: I used a fresh install of ubuntu on my switch for this, there shouldn't be any other program that is messing something up.

Can you send me your terminal logs?

Actually, I was messing around with Jammy for a bit and decided to try my hand on Bionic again recently (I was going to try a specific work-around to get a certain game to work). Unfortunately, it seems that not only has support for Bionic ended for Pi-Apps, but the current version of the Steam installer on the L4T Megascript seems to hate Bionic. From my troubleshooting, it seems to specifically be the Steam installer. Your best bet at this point would be switching (no pun intended) to the new Jammy distro (unless someone can get the steam .deb/apt-get to work).
 

tsuneki0137

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i followed the steps for the jimmy version (22.04) but when i run steam, it will close and give this error:

"X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
Major opcode of failed request: 150 (GLX)
Minor opcode of failed request: 26 (X_GLXMakeContextCurrent)
Serial number of failed request: 69
Current serial number in output stream: 69"

there's a way to fix this?
 

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