Guide to launching Elite Dangerous on Steamdeck as Non-Steam Game to avoid compromising your FDev account

[Archvillain]

As you may know, if we want our money to support the ongoing development of Elite then it is best to never allow your Frontier / Elite account to ever be associated with Steam or with a Steam key or purchased through Steam. (As soon as your Elite account is associated with a Steam account then the game developers have to start paying Valve a big chunk of ALL future transactions from your account [everything from cosmetics to expansions], and FDev must always pay that Valve tax REGARDLESS of whether you make purchases directly from FDev or through Steam. It is irrevocable and forever, it is the price of being allowed to download your files from Valve's servers, but FDev has always had its own servers so there is no need to let Valve siphon away $$$ just to add a middleman)

So to play Elite on Steam Deck I wanted to avoid the path of involving Steam, but don't worry - it will still launch from your Library in Gaming Mode like other Steam games. However setting that up for the first time adds extra steps to the initial installation process and might not be intuitive, so here are the steps I used:

1. Switch the Steam Deck to desktop mode (“Switch to Desktop” is in the Power options)
2. From desktop, use a web browser to go to the Frontier Store, log in, and download Elite Dangerous. This downloads the file EliteDangerous-Client-Installer.exe
3. On the desktop, launch Steam (don’t return to Gaming Mode, instead launch the desktop version of Steam on the desktop)
4. In the bottom left corner of Steam is a button “Add a Game”. Click this then select the option “Add a Non-Steam Game”
5. This brings up a window called “Add Non-Steam Game” which shows a list of programs. EliteDangerous-Client-Installer.exe will probably not be in the list because it is not a linux program. Click “Browse” (bottom left corner) to bring up a file browser, then in the Places menu on the left click “Downloads”. This should open the folder containing EliteDangerous-Client-Installer.exe, select the file and click “Open”. This should bring you back to the “Add Non-Steam Game” window but this time with EliteDangerous-Client-Installer.exe listed with a tick-mark next to it. Click “Add Selected Programs”
6. Exit Steam, and return to Gaming Mode (the desktop should have an icon called “Return to Gaming Mode” that leaves the desktop and returns the Steam Deck to its default interface of acting like a game console.)
7. Once in Gaming Mode, go to Library (hit the Steam Deck’s physical button labelled Steam and select Library), and in your Library move to the category called “Non-Steam”. Select EliteDangerous-Client-Installer.exe to go to its launch options.
8. EliteDangerous-Client-Installer.exe should have a green “Play” button, but it probably won’t work because at this point it assumes it’s a linux program (when it is a windows program). Click on the cog-gear icon to open the settings for EliteDangerous-Client-Installer.exe, and from there open “Properties”.
9. Go to the “Compatibility” section of Properties and force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool. I set it to Proton Experimental or Proton 9.0-4, because these are the most recent versions of Proton at time of writing. Whatever is your latest Proton version will probably work.
10. Once Proton is selected, back out of the Options menu and hit the green “Play” button for EliteDangerous-Client-Installer.exe. Now it should work.
11. EliteDangerous-Client-Installer.exe will now take you through the setup process as it would on windows, however when it asks you which drive/filepath you want to install the Elite Launcher to, it might not be clear which drive is what on the Steam Deck. Drive E: is my Steam Deck's micro-SD card, so I selected E: and it suggested installing to E:/EDLaunch, which I accepted.
12. Once the Elite Dangerous Launcher has been installed, then just like EliteDangerous-Client-Installer.exe you have to add it to your Non-Steam Games and configure it to use Proton. So; switch to Desktop again, and follow steps 3-10 again but this time for the file EDLaunch.exe. Note: Finding the EDLaunch.exe file for Step 5 will be more involved:
13. To find the EDLaunch.exe file in the file browser window, go to the Steam Decks's root directory using the “Go Up” icon – a chevron pointing upwards. From there you can find the "run" directory. The file location will be something like:
    > run > media > mmcblk0p1 > EDLaunch > EDLaunch.exe
    Then continue the steps.

Once Step 10 is complete you should be able to run EDLaunch.exe from the Steam Deck's Gaming Mode (in the Non-Steam Games category of your Library), allowing you to select which version of Elite you want to download or play, the same as you do on Windows.

o7

 

[VerticalBlank]

Thanks for this very helpful guide! I just used it to set up my own Steam Deck. What is nice is that the game installation and the user data reside under separate prefix folders within Steam (in my case, under /home/deck/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata), which means that to set up my alt account all I had to do was add the launcher to Steam once more (repeating step 12), and my main and my alt CMDRs coexist while sharing the same application binaries.

If you want to run a journal uploader such as EDMC, you will find the logs under the prefix for each CMDR under pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Saved Games/Frontier Developments/Elite Dangerous.

 

[Archvillain]

Speaking of steam deck, a tip / warning about playing on deck:
Using the power button (steam deck suspend / quick-resume) is super convenient but this can produce the fast-forward "double-time" bug (previously seen on xbox. This "bug" [technically an intentional feature I think] is a double-edged sword; it might sometimes work in our favour but is quite dangerous.

WHAT CAUSES IT: Leaving the console / steam deck suspended while at the main menu (or while in-game if you're suicidal). The longer it is left in this state the further the local game-time becomes offset from server-time. When you start playing again, the game tries to fix the discrepancy gracefully by speeding up game-time a little until it is back in sync with server-time. The result is like a youtube video at 150%-200% speed. Quick-resuming after an hour suspended might cause 5 minutes of double-time before the game is sync'ed back with the servers.

If you are playing in double-time, everything happens faster: jumps between systems take less time, going places in supercruise is quicker, flying and turning is quicker, other ships are quicker, docking sequence is quicker, galaxy map movements are quicker, the whole game is running in fast-forward. You might think that's great, and it would be if you were eg. just trying to get to Colonia as quickly as possible, but:

PROBLEM: stellar bodies in the universe run at regular speed for a second then catch up to the double-time in a skip each second. This means that planets and stations have a hopping motion along their orbits in supercruise, and those hops might be eg. causing them to move faster along their orbit than the speed you need to slow down to in order to exit supercruise if you are chasing them from behind instead of coming from the side.

DANGER: The stations likewise rotate as normal then catch up in a skip every second. This means the mail-slot can rotate as much as 90 degrees in a single frame. If your ship is in the mail slot at that moment and not inside the station, this can instantly destroy your ship. For an especially large slow ship like the Type-9 it may be nearly impossible to survive exiting a station during double-time, and faster smaller ships are at some risk too. (Not all occurrences of double-time seem to run at the same speed increase. So stations aren't always maximally dangerous)

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

I know Frontier is somewhat between a rock and a hard place in that regard, but ever since the UK stopped dealing with PayPal, Steam is the only way I can purchase ARX at all. I don't have or want a credit card, and I don't think my banking card works as payment, or at least I haven't found out how. Anyway, either I buy my ARX through steam, or not at all. Not sure which alternative is worse for Frontier.

 

[VerticalBlank]

I know Frontier is somewhat between a rock and a hard place in that regard, but ever since the UK stopped dealing with PayPal, Steam is the only way I can purchase ARX at all. I don't have or want a credit card, and I don't think my banking card works as payment, or at least I haven't found out how. Anyway, either I buy my ARX through steam, or not at all. Not sure which alternative is worse for Frontier.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the UK stopped dealing with PayPal" because that is nonsense. I am in the UK and PayPal works just fine for me, as does using my debit card to buy ARX. In any case it's somewhat off-topic for a guide to launching ED on Steam Deck.

 

[VerticalBlank]

Speaking of steam deck, a tip / warning about playing on deck:
Using the power button (steam deck suspend / quick-resume) is super convenient but this can produce the fast-forward "double-time" bug (previously seen on xbox. This "bug" [technically an intentional feature I think] is a double-edged sword; it might sometimes work in our favour but is quite dangerous.

WHAT CAUSES IT: Leaving the console / steam deck suspended while at the main menu (or while in-game if you're suicidal). ...

Thanks, good to know although as a seasoned explorer I would always drop to somewhere safe in normalspace and log out fully before suspending the deck.

As for setting up EDMC for a two-CMDR install, I'll leave that for tomorrow. Need to consult with the team on Discord first.

 

[Archvillain]

@Helmut Grokenberger - I expect that it is not possible to buy ARX through steam unless you have linked your account to steam. Since you have linked your account to steam that means that FDev is always obligated to pay Valve about a third of your money regardless of where or how you make any purchase from FDev for that account

(If it was possible to link accounts in such a way that you were never able to download the game from steam, then that shouldn't trigger the obligation, but I expect that's never been an option)

 

[the100thmonkey]

I'm not sure what you mean by "the UK stopped dealing with PayPal" because that is nonsense. I am in the UK and PayPal works just fine for me, as does using my debit card to buy ARX. In any case it's somewhat off-topic for a guide to launching ED on Steam Deck.

FDev no longer accept PayPal as payment. whatever the reason is, I don't know, but it does put Helmut in the difficult position they describe.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

I'm not sure what you mean by "the UK stopped dealing with PayPal" because that is nonsense. I am in the UK and PayPal works just fine for me, as does using my debit card to buy ARX. In any case it's somewhat off-topic for a guide to launching ED on Steam Deck.

I wouldn't know the details, I am not from the UK. But apparently a lot of companies in the UK don't deal with PayPal anymore; Frontier is one of them.

And I only added this because the OP put a very big emphasis on "keeping your account uncontaminated by Steam so Frontier don't miss out on transactions".