A Guide to Balatro Mods on the Steam Deck

A quick and easy guide to Balatro mods on the Steam Deck! Currently works as of the latest update!

1 | Wait, Balatro mods are a thing?

Yes, you heard that right, Balatro mods are a thing! And it's pretty easy to set up too! At least, on Windows. Balatro is a perfect fit for the Steam Deck though, so naturally you might want to play these mods on the go. So, let's go over how you can install Balatro mods on your Steam Deck!

DISCLAIMER: This guide might break in the future!

This heavily depends on the game running through Proton for this method to work. If a Linux build is to be released in the future, this method will likely not work anymore.

For Windows, check out this guide by Vormix_Sv. It's mostly a copy and paste from the Steamodded github page though.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3175609191

2 | Prerequisites

Of course, to mod Balatro, you'll first need a few things.

1. Balatro
(I mean obviously)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2379780/Balatro/

2. Steamodded
This is the modloader that we'll be using to actually load said mods.
https://github.com/Steamopollys/steamodded/releases

3. Lovely
This is how we get said modloader into the game! The latest version should work as of the current build. For Balatro versions below v1.0.1f-FULL, you'll need v0.3.1 of Lovely instead.
https://github.com/ethangreen-dev/lovely-injector/releases/

4. Whatever mod you want to add!
In this example, I'll be using Balatro Re;Shuffled, because I have a terrible sense of humour.
https://github.com/XenoCHeart/Crimsons-Ultimate-Card-Collection/releases/tag/RS-Release

If you want to look at some other mods, jie65535 on Github has a repository full of cool and useful ones! Note that mods that require "Balamod" are not compatible with Steamodded. Lovely mods should also work with this method as well.
https://github.com/jie65535/awesome-balatro

This guide assumes you at least know the basics of navigating through Desktop Mode. Whilst not required, a keyboard and mouse does make things a lot easier. With that out of the way, let's get started!

3 | The Downloads

When you go to download Steamodded, you'll notice there's a lot you can download. You may also notice Linux instructions, but those aren't really feasible to do on a Steam Deck for most users. This is why we'll be making use of Lovely Injector.

For Steamodded, download the 1.0.0 alpha. It can be found just under the deprecation notice.



Next, when downloading Lovely Injector, download the Windows zip. This contains "version.dll", which is what we'll be using to inject the mod loader.



If you're using Firefox, the file may be incorrectly marked as a virus. If it does, just allow the download. I can't verify if other browsers believe it to be a virus.





And finally, simply download whatever mod(s) you want to use. For Balatro Re;Shuffled, it's just this zip file you need to download.



Once done, we can now move on to installing them all!

4 | Installation

Once you have everything downloaded and put onto your Steam Deck, navigate to wherever Balatro is installed.
If you've installed it on your SD Card, it'll be under
primary/steamapps/common/Balatro

If you've installed it in the internal drive, it'll be under
Home/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Balatro

Then, copy and paste the "version.dll" file into the Balatro folder.
It should look like this.



For me, Balatro is installed on my SD card.



Next, locate the Appdata folder. Usually, it will be in your internal storage regardless of where you installed Balatro.

Home/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/2379780/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/Roaming/Balatro



Create a new folder inside called "mods".



Then, extract Steamodded and put it in the mods folder. (Ignore the lovely folder, that automatically gets added when launching the game modded)



The last thing you'll need to do is add this to your launch options via Steam.

 WINEDLLOVERRIDES="version=n,b" %command% 

At this point, if you launch the game now, you should have a mods button, along with it saying its modded below the version number!



It's as easy as that!

To install mods, simply place them in the same mods folder as before. Just make sure they're in a seperate folder. It should look something like this:



And with that, you're done!

5 | That's it?

That's it! Go and have fun with whatever mods you feel like playing!

If you ever want to revert back to vanilla Balatro, you can rename "version.dll" to something else, or you can simply delete it.

If you have any questions or are stuck on a specific part, leave a comment and I'll try my best to help! I'm not an expert Steam Deck tinkerer by any means though, so don't expect me to be able to answer absolutely everything. If a specific mod isn't working for whatever reason, I don't think I'll be able to help you.

Other than that, go wild!

Special thanks to Rabbit for posting the method to get Lovely working as of the latest update!

[Max_Gaddi]

i have an error when inserting the launch options, windows can't find WINEDLLOVERRIDES="version=n,b" %command%

[Cookie_Crsp]

Just one note that took me a minute to figure out. If you are having trouble getting the mod to work try launching in proton experimental. I tried for a couple of hours using different versions of lovely and steamodded before launching with a different proton version and then it worked right away.

[Ice]

thank you so much.

the guide still works as of march 10, 2025.

[apexeon3]

My folder for steamodded is called smods intead of steamodded, and then i get a error when trying to play a round saying it is missing dependencies; Steamodded>=1.0.0 Alpha. Did idwnload the wrong steamodded?

[me when i when i when i when i w]

Would appreciate your eyes on https://github.com/jayceslesar/deckman/pull/1 ... I am attempting to set the launch options without having to go into the steam ui... Any thoughts?

[I_did_things]

Hey, I've got balatro to run as a modded version but for whatever reason it doesn't detect my mods lmao. I'm going to delete what mods I have installed and try again and will update if that fixes it

[yesnt175]

i dont see a dwmapi.dll file or a version.dll plz help

[Chaotix]

This is my fault for not updating every single screenshot. The DLL you're looking for is just called "version.dll". I'll update the guide with new screenshots when I get the chance to!

[jjadon1123]

Somehow I don't have the dwmapi.dll file, and I don't know what to do... can I get help?

[Seriouspup]

Idk if this is obvious to everyone else but just a tip - the launch command line is case sensitive. This didn't work until I mirrored the capitalization in the example