This is a BIG announcement by Junk Store for Steam Deck. What was previously a plugin via Decky to play Epic Games and GOG titles on your Steam Deck is now…well, if you read it, it’s a whole lot more.
I’m just going to do the bare minimum here and share the post by copying, formatting for Lemmy, and pasting here. Hopefully you’ll forgive that, and maybe breathe a sigh of relief that for once a post by me hasn’t got 10,000 words of rambling?
What it boils down to is a massive update on what is ‘next’ for Junk Store. What follows is their post, not my words:
The Next Generation:
We haven’t talked about the new version of Junk Store since Valve removed it from the Steam Store. While it was a setback, in many ways it pushed Junk Store further. You might be wondering what we have been up to.
Yes, this new iteration of Junk Store will be paid software and will be closed source. This is a complete rebuild from the ground up. It still looks and feels the same, but with greatly enhanced functionality. The amount of effort put into it so far and the remaining effort to complete the original vision is just too large to do it without financial resources. The current development effort amounts to around 5.5k man hours.
But what does this mean in terms of functionality and progress?
(image of ‘the new main menu’)
Junk Store can now run without Decky
This is a completely new loader that is developed completely independent from the Decky source code. New techniques and code has been created in order for this to work. As a bonus Junk Store will run side by side with Decky. So if you have Decky it will not interfere. Since this will not carry all the extra features that Decky requires, this will allow us to improve stability between Steam upgrades.
Junk Store extensions are now generated
(image is of ‘new extensions’)
This means that more than 95% of the code required to create custom extensions is created for users. New extensions can be as simple as 2 lines of code to specify an emulator command line call or it could be 200 lines of python for something like Amazon. The current set of extensions that will be available for download with the new version is Epic, Gog and Amazon. More will be added over time.
Pricing is still being finalised but it is dependent on infrastructure costs as we now have to run our own servers to host all of the new features. Given the nature of this new version we will have ongoing costs per user and it all has to be factored in.
What’s new?
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Global download queue
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Language selection
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DLC selection
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Installation of game dependencies, like C++ runtimes, without the need for proton tricks
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GOG has proper support for DosBox and ScummVM games
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GOG Dosbox support has a Dosbox config editor
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The option to enable experimental cloud saves for supported games (we still don’t trust it, but it’s there if you’re a risk taker).
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There’s a LOT more options (too many in fact), to control all manner of things. If you like to tinker, this is for you.
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The new version is faster and more optimised so you can now see 1000 games per tab compared to the 100 in the python version.
(*image is of ‘custom scripting’)
(*image is of ‘game dependency installer’)
(image is of ‘Dosbox settings editor’)
(image is of ‘custom launcher scripts’)
(*image is of custom launcher scripts)
(image is of ‘Custom launchers per game’)
(image is of ‘extension generator’)
What we need from the community:
We are currently looking for power users who would like to help with the alpha testing of this new version. During this phase you will get access to Junk Store and the extension Generator in its full glory, and it’s no exaggeration to say that there’s well over 1000 different settings and options in it. This is quite overwhelming and it will be stripped back to only the essentials for general release. So if you’re a power user and would like to see just what kind of horsepower is under the hood in Junk Store, this is your chance.
Given that we will have quite large overheads for a general release we would also like to take this opportunity to explore interest in an early access program. This would not be your typical pay to test deal. The software will be stable and as near to release state as possible, think of it more like a soft launch. This would allow us to build up reserves to shoulder the server costs for a launch.
We’re currently in Alpha, rapidly approaching Beta quality. If this is something that might be of interest to you please register your interest here:
This is the link to registration via docs.google
- Please note that testing spots will be strictly limited due to associated costs per user. Early access will also be limited due to the initial manual workload associated with onboarding for this, we are just two people and one of us needs to do the coding.
We hope that you are as excited about this as we are, we’re looking forward to your responses in the comments and registration of interest.
And that’s that! Hopefully some here find this interesting!
I have no idea what problem juck store solves that isn’t covered by steamdeck, lutris, heroic, or emudeck. It must be an incredibly niche problem. Best of luck to them.
There’s a lot of pushback against junk store for switching to a paid model, but I’m fine with it. Obviously FOSS is great, but we don’t have any issues with games requiring payment and being closed source.
Heroic and the original Junk Store plugin will still exist, but I’m looking forward to seeing what the stand alone version of junk store is like. The plugin is already a big step towards having epic/gog games feel like they’re natively supported on the deck, and I’m hoping the standalone version can take that even farther.
Is the push back against paid model or mainly subscription based?
I don’t mind paying once, or even for mayor versions, but not as subscription honestly.
The dev is looking at a one time payment afaik.
The old Decky extension for Junk Store required a one time payment of $6 for GoG early access, and anytime the extension would come up a lot of people would complain about that.
I might be mistaken, but them pointing out “ongoing per user costs” + becoming closed source led me to believe they are moving to subscription based model. I have the gog extension even if I don’t really use it, and I would consider paying again. But not recurrent.
Let’s see how it goes, I hope I’m mistaken.
They have a survey right now asking people if they would be willing to alpha test and what they would be willing to pay, and there are only one-time payments on the survey. They’re somewhat high payments though, $30-60.
Yes, this new iteration of Junk Store will be paid software and will be closed source.
And then I stopped reading.
Yep, have completely lost interest now. Asking users to pay is one thing, but then going to closed source… That’s a no from me dawg
From the developer:
“The open source version will remain and the Gog extension people have already paid for will continue to work. Nothing will be taken away. Nothing will be broken intentionally, that’s not how we roll.”
yet
This is step one to enshitification… always.
It didn’t say subscription-based, but more power to you.
It didn’t explicitly say subscription but it did say they now have ongoing server costs per user. That, to me, sounds exactly like a subscription is coming. Possibly with a “lifetime” option that will disappear when they need money again.
Remember, in the end, tech like this will be sold or bought by a bigger company that will milk this tech and abandon it or do a windows and kill its coolness… probably. Profit seeks profit.
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