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Build a personal Steam-like gaming platform for your video game collection (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by evidentlynotedthief@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Arr guys,

Recently, I came across an app called GameVault on r/selfhosted and wanted to share it here. It's like a customized Steam-like platform for games stored on your seedbox or fileserver you can run yourself on your server.

You and your family can then use the Windows app to download them, track your playtime and so on. The idea is pretty neat and like Jellyfin/Kodi but for videogames.

The developers cannot officially promote piracy, so they have a scary disclaimer on their page, but the app works perfectly fine and everything is formulated "tounge in cheek"-ish.

Personally, I have about 25 "alternatively obtained" games on my seedbox-server by now, and it's working fine for me and my kids.

If you have basic Linux-server knowledge, setting it up is not difficult. For complete beginners, there's a guide on their website: https://gamevau.lt/docs/intro

Side note: I'm definitely not the dev, and my username is just an anagram for that by coincidence.

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[-] kippinitreal@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Didn't steam have a feature to add non-steam games to your library? Ofcourse it didn't support all the steam features + it would allow steam gather data about "less-than-legal" copies of games associated with users 🤷

My dumb ass kid brain put all my "alternatively sourced" games to it thinking I was cool

[-] seaturtle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 year ago

You can add literally anything, and all Steam does is launch the executable you specify. And maybe take screenshots if you use the overlay.

Valve could actually look through the games people have added and do some sort of major crackdown, but for better or worse they seem to have left this alone. Still, though, I'd consider it a vulnerability, and I also recommend against using Steam because Steam is basically DRM. (Yes, this varies by game and can be argued over. But it still definitely tries to lock you into using it, one way or another.)