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Chillon Jan 29 @ 8:55pm

Guild Wars steam deck rant.

I am a long time Guild Wars player, I have never owned Guild Wars on steam nor have I had the opportunity to purchase it. I do however have a shared library with someone who does own it and I have been able to download it and log in to my non steam gw account on my steam deck and play it flawlessly (I am super grateful for this feature).

My issue is that I have other friends with steam decks and Linux gaming PCs and I have no way to help them download the game through steam the way I was able to do. They already have guild wars accounts but no obvious way to download the game through steam.
Does anyone know a way to download GW through steam if you don't already own a steam copy of the game? Are there any steam console commands or anything that would get this to work?
I would love for library sharing to not be the only solution to just downloading the launcher which is clearly still there.

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Showing 1-8 of 8 comments

c0Zm1c

Jan 30 @ 3:37am

Other than Family Sharing, I don't think there's any way of downloading it through Steam if it's not owned on an account. That's not your only option though.

For Steam Deck, their best option might be to switch to desktop mode, download the Guild Wars client from the official website ( https://www.guildwars.com ), install it and add it as a "non-Steam Game" to the Steam library. Once added to Steam, it'll be there in the library when returning to Gaming Mode and launch-able like any other Steam game. Don't worry about Guild Wars updates because they come from the Guild Wars servers and not Steam.

The same method should work for Linux desktop systems too but I don't know if/how Proton is applied there. I would think it's the same as on Steam Deck in desktop mode. where Proton is applied automatically within Steam but I don't know.

Chillon Jan 30 @ 5:00pm

Originally posted by c0Zm1c:
Other than Family Sharing, I don't think there's any way of downloading it through Steam if it's not owned on an account. That's not your only option though.

For Steam Deck, their best option might be to switch to desktop mode, download the Guild Wars client from the official website ( https://www.guildwars.com ), install it and add it as a "non-Steam Game" to the Steam library. Once added to Steam, it'll be there in the library when returning to Gaming Mode and launch-able like any other Steam game. Don't worry about Guild Wars updates because they come from the Guild Wars servers and not Steam.

The same method should work for Linux desktop systems too but I don't know if/how Proton is applied there. I would think it's the same as on Steam Deck in desktop mode. where Proton is applied automatically within Steam but I don't know.

Much appreciated. I will try your suggestion. That would save a lot of head ache.

it's a gabe has Guild Wars

Feb 5 @ 1:56pm

On top of what c0Zm1c suggested, there's also waiting for the game to go on sale here on Steam. I got the trilogy for £6 and Eye of the North for £4.

But just in case your friends really don't want to buy the game again, no matter how much it costs, you should keep in mind that installing non-Steam games on the Deck can be a headache. Not always, but that's possible sometimes. I once installed an FFXI private server and that required some modification of the non-Steam game (once added to Steam) that I wouldn't know the first thing about without a detailed guide.

Hopefully you can just install it (add the installer as a non-Steam game and run it that way to make use of Proton, otherwise you'll have to fiddle with the likes of Wine) and then add the executable as a non-Steam game.

On the topic of Steam Deck, how did you find mapping kb/m keys to the Deck? And how is it in combat with multiple enemies while also managing a party of heroes or henchmen? I had it on my Deck briefly and intended to organise a controller layout, but got a bit fed up with how the interface layout is saved to your account (so it's the same across machines), which made jumping between the Deck and my PC quite annoying.

Devolant Mar 4 @ 5:09am

When's the next sale? Also want to play it on my deck

FYNE;>

Mar 6 @ 11:59am

when I've bought it for steam, I remember that it was mentioned that there is no sale for GW1 it's too old too uninteresting we can be happy that servers are up

You can launch the game through Lutris which works just fine, but I would like to launch the game via Steam to collect these sweet sweet hrs played and maybe some overlay features...
is there an out of the box proton version working?

c0Zm1c

Mar 6 @ 7:22pm

Originally posted by Devolant:
When's the next sale? Also want to play it on my deck

Originally posted by FYNE>:
when I've bought it for steam, I remember that it was mentioned that there is no sale for GW1 it's too old too uninteresting we can be happy that servers are up

There was a period of two or three years (~2019 to 2022 I think it was?) where the game was absent from sales but it's appearing in them more frequently again now. The last one was during the winter sale 2024. I don't know when the next one will be though. The 20th Anniversary is next month so maybe then?