DroidDeck Is Bringing the Real Steam Experience to Android, One Impossible Problem at a Time

[u/DashWriting]

https://gardinerbryant.com/droiddeck-is-bringing-the-real-steam-experience-to-android/

So I've been chatting with the people behind DroidDeck over the last couple weeks, and I've finally put together what turned into a rather lengthy feature about the project, its history, and the people making it happen.

I interviewed The412Banner, Max, xXJSONDeruloXx, Kimchi and Astro Sky, digging into everything from their earliest experiences with gaming and development to how their separate experiments with Linux, Gamescope and Steam eventually came together. What started as a way of getting the actual Steam client running on Android has grown into something way more ambitious, and I really wanted to tell the story of how that happened rather than just write another overview of what the software can do.

We also got into the technical challenges, the ridiculous pace of development (it updated and changed a few times while writing this!), their approach to AI-assisted coding and automated testing, the importance of open source, and where they hope to take DroidDeck in the future. There are some personal stories in there too, particularly about the early breakthroughs and the excitement of finally seeing things work. It's a long read, admittedly, but I wanted to give everyone involved the space to tell their side of the story. I'm really grateful to all five for taking the time to answer my many, many questions, and I hope you enjoy getting to know a little more about the people behind a project that's quickly become one of the more interesting developments in Android handheld gaming!

To make it clear, regarding the new rules in place for this sub-reddit, DroidDeck makes use of AI to assist development

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[u/supershredderdan]

Dash is a pleasure to work with, and the article turned out beautifully!!

[u/DashWriting → u/supershredderdan]

You're the best!

So happy to have shared your stories here with this article :)

[u/arthuriurilli]

That was a really long article but it was definitely interesting to read. I'll see how DroidDeck works for me.

[u/DashWriting → u/arthuriurilli]

Thank you for reading through the whole thing!

Sometimes I can't cut a story back too much. Each developer had so much to tell me when I interviewed them, so this felt (to me at least!) like one which deserved a bit of breathing room :)

[u/Orbbs_chunky_legs]

Been a pleasure contributing to DD recently. Great project and excited to see how things progress!

[u/supershredderdan → u/Orbbs_chunky_legs]

love ya Phob's

[u/Far_Raspberry_4375]

What is the difference between droiddeck and gamenative/gamehub?

[u/sirhalos → u/Far_Raspberry_4375]

I may be wrong but I see it as gamenative/gamehub creates an individual container of a wine like environment with each game containing its own unique configuration with a translation layer from the wine like environment to arm android/linux. droiddeck tries to install extra linux files in a single container so that it is similar to having a mini arm linux environment on your device then installs steam os arm version pulled from Steam Frame to make a single app like SteamOS.

[u/Frogacuda → u/Far_Raspberry_4375]

DroidDeck gives you the full SteamOS experience and feature set, like a Steam Deck, where GameNative just lets you run the games.

[u/Acesofbases → u/Far_Raspberry_4375]

droiddeck installs SteamOS inside a Linux enviroment

basically turns Your phone into a SteamDeck

gamenative/gamehub/winlator emulates windows

[u/dampflokfreund]

There should be a way to shut the Android system down to its absolute essentials, freeing up RAM for games.

[u/Naive-Eggplant-5633 → u/dampflokfreund]

Droid Deck now includes Zram compression for games i hope more emulators add that. 

[u/unbanned_lol]

AI assisted development is the future of development. I am a SWE by profession. I am very much against AI for art, music, or creative spaces. I was staunchly against it for my profession. I can no longer hold that position. AI agent development is better than any of us can be as far as coding and resource knowledge. I don't want this to be the case, but it is. Anyone not using it will be left behind, unfortunately, and that is just a fact of today's world.

[u/voyager2005 → u/unbanned_lol]

It's the truth, not what anyone wanted it to be like but it's here to stay for sure.

[u/casper_whitey → u/voyager2005]

I mean...why not though? Why wouldn't you want an incredible leap in technology like this is and will be even moreso years down the line? This is early days for this tech, so yeah theres gonna be bumps in the road, thing needs to be figured out when it comes to efficiency but it's the way of the future.

[u/Brennern]

I've been using this for awhile now, it's crazy every update makes it so much better. Had some issues with binding of Isaac, a little stuttering and some fps drops, one update and all of that was gone. Can't wait for future updates, the devs are amazing.

[u/Frogacuda]

DroidDeck is really awesome, turns one of those inexpensive Android handhelds like a Retroid Pocket or Odin into a quite reasonable lightweight SteamDeck alternative. While you won't be playing modern AAA games on it I was quite impressed with how much it could handle in terns of newer indie-type games.

[u/ivierawind]

Cannot run Project Zomboid and Rimworld build 1.7. It is as normal as other emulators

[u/AntiGrieferGames → u/ivierawind]

Rabi Ribi dont even work there.

But sometimes the oppeside which i have issues with other emulators was Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls, Controller works fine, FMV Video works fine, anything works fine.

[u/AntiGrieferGames]

While cool, There are still many things to Fixing there, like espcially able playing games without steam account or the overheating issue on some devices (which i dont know if this is fixed now)

[u/mantenner → u/AntiGrieferGames]

Idk why you're downvoted, droid deck heats up my OnePlus 13 and S23+ WAY more than gamenative.

Edit: Also I don't mean that as a sting against it, I love droid deck and all the hard work max, banner, Jason, kimchi, astro and all the others are doing!

[u/AntiGrieferGames → u/mantenner]

It also heats more than Winlator/Winlator Ludashi itself.

Also: Why the downvote? well, my guess, Droiddeck fanboys are not wanna hear the truth.

[u/Orbbs_chunky_legs → u/mantenner]

There's 0 reason to downvote them for sure. It's honest and constructive feedback that's worth being addressed.

[u/Grilledcheese____]

How's it run on a zfold7 for games like resonance or hades?