OpenSteamClient (Alpha)

A partially open-source Steam client for Linux.

Current status: Being rewritten in C#

Features

• 64-bit (but needs 32-bit only steamservice for some functionality)
• Lightweight (around 70MB ram use, however this is very leaky currently)
• No steamwebhelper requirement
• All games supported (technically)
• VAC supported (you can play, but you might get banned. We're not responsible if you get banned.)
• Customize as you wish (Uses your desktop's color scheme)
• Wayland supported without need for XWayland
• Uses Qt (6)

Todo

Important

• Everything marked //TODO in the code
• A better logo (I'm not a graphic designer)
• Update steamclient binaries
• UI is pretty crude
• Lots of debug and placeholder things in UI
• Download queue (most likely next feature)
• Friends network support
• Steam cloud support
• Shader management support
• Shutting down shouldn't be fast (we should wait for downloads to stop)

Nice-to-haves

• Optional background music while downloading apps and/or browsing the store
• Styled UI
• Artwork

Screenshots

System requirements

Distro requirements

• Arch Linux

• Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar Lobster) or newer

• Any other distro with Qt6 6.4.2 or greater

Install (Ready-to-go binaries)

Warning: These releases (currently) are only meant for developers. There is an uncountable amount of bugs I've yet to fix.

Debian and debian based distros

1. Download the deb from the Releases
2. Double click or install through the command line
3. You're set! Now launch OpenSteamClient through your application launcher, or use the terminal: opensteam

After installation, read After Install

From master branch or some commit

1. Go to the Actions tab here on Github.
2. Click the commit you want if the build succeeded
3. There should be an "Artifacts" section
4. Download "linux-artifacts", it contains deb and tar.gz files.
5. Install with the above instructions, but skip downloading from Releases and instead just extract the zip

After installation, read After Install

Arch Linux

We provide an AUR package: opensteam-git

Install it through makepkg or your AUR helper. Use your application launcher to start it, or run opensteam in a terminal.

Then read After Install

After install (Important)

Note: you shouldn't start the official steam client now as it'll override our files and break both installs. Read Restoring ValveSteam below if you want to use the official client again.

Install and Launching (Building from source)

0. Make sure you have the build dependencies installed.

1. Clone this repo recursively git clone https://github.com/20PercentRendered/opensteamclient --recursive

2. mkdir build && cd build

3. cmake ..

4. make

5. Make sure steam is not running.

6. ./opensteam

7. OpenSteamClient will be installed and launched.

Restoring ValveSteam

If you wish to revert back to the official client, you have three options:

From the UI

1. Go to the "Steam" dropdown and pick "Quit and restore ValveSteam"
2. Opensteam will close and the official client will be restored.

From the command line

1. Close OpenSteamClient
2. Launch opensteam with the --bootstrapper-restore-valvesteam option.

Manual

I won't provide exact instructions, since it's a lot of effort. Instead, I'll give you a quick rundown on how the split install works. When opensteam is initially installed, it renames .steam to .valvesteam. It also renames .local/share/Steam to .local/share/ValveSteam.

Opensteam then installs itself into .opensteam and .local/share/OpenSteam.

It then creates .steam as a symlink pointing to .opensteam, and .local/share/Steam pointing to .local/share/OpenSteam. If you want to revert manually, you need to change the symlinks's targets to point to .valvesteam and .local/share/ValveSteam.

Q&A

pls windows suprort

Although all the technologies we use are cross platform, windows support is not planned.

Partially open source?

This is a GUI for Valve's own Steam Client binaries like steamclient.so and steamservice.so. Those binaries are not open source and Valve doesn't officially support 3rd-party usage of these. This also means we inherit design choices and potential bugs from these files. Due to this, we cannot fix everything, such as the client not conforming to the XDG paths specification.

Additionally, Valve does not provide any headers or code to go along with these binaries, so this project essentially works because of guesswork by lots of community members and projects (Thank you!) (such as open-steamworks, open-steamworks fork by m4dEngi, SteamTracking, protobufs dumped from the steam client and MiniUTL).

Also, thank you Valve for improving Linux gaming, and making a native Steam Client in the first place.

What version of Steam's binaries do you use?

The repo includes a copy of steam_client_ubuntu12.vdf, which shows the version and has download paths for the binaries. The urls point to regular zip files, just use unzip.

The client crashes a lot or doesn't start

Delete ~/.local/share/opensteam and try again. Also check that you have a PC that meets the requirements. Also, run OpenSteamClient from the terminal and post the logs in a Github issue clearly describing your situation.

Why such high distro requirements?

The client was made on Arch Linux, for Arch Linux (primarily), so I used whatever features were available.

I don't like the "Web bloats". Can I get rid of them?

Yes. This app was built to fit as many users needs as possible.

You can disable building the webview component by passing -DNOWEBVIEW to cmake. You can also pass --no-browser as a command line argument to opensteam to disable it.