With so many games coming with your Prime subscription every month, how do you play all those games that Amazon gave you on Steam Deck?
Are you also just now realizing that you’re sitting on a metric ton of free games from Amazon? Well, if you’re like us and want to get on this list through the Steam deck, then you’ve come to the right place.
Amazon Prime Gaming’s goodies rarely include Steam Games, and if they do, there’s a way to add your surprisingly large collection of games to the Steam Deck. You just need to work a little to get started.
Be sure to check ProtonDB to see if the headers actually work on Linux before you run into the hassle.
However, the main problem here is that we need to bypass the Amazon app itself, which is not really designed to work in SteamOS Steam Deck. To do this, we will have to use the reliable Lutris tool, which just so happens to have received an update for Amazon support.
Don’t worry! Not only that, there’s a very good chance that most if not all of the games that have gone through Prime Gaming over the years will work with Proton or Wine. There’s also a killer suite of apps that will do all the hard work for you.
Proton and Wine are intermediate layers created by Valve and the Linux community for the natural launch of Windows applications without the need for virtual machines.
How to Play Prime Gaming Games on Steam Deck
First, press the Steam button, select Power and switch to “Desktop Mode”.
If you haven’t updated Lutris or even installed it, you’ll need to log into the Discover app first. Download the latest version of Lutris here and you will need to add it to your list of sources.
At the top, click the hamburger menu button (three lines), and then select settings. Now in the next menu, select “Sources”. Now you can enable Amazon Prime Gaming, as well as any other stores you want to activate.
After that, close the window both on the side and under the sources, now Amazon Prime Gaming should be active. You can log in through a small figure that prompts you to log in using Amazon. It will hang for a few seconds after logging in, after which the actual Amazon Store will load for a short time while Lutris receives your information.
After a short wait, it will also scan your games and you can start installing them as usual. Choose your game, keep clicking “Continue” and you should be ready to go.
How to Play Amazon Prime Games in Steam Deck Game Mode
This is a fairly simple solution, very similar to the Epic Games Store. In desktop mode, open Steam and in the lower corner click the “plus” button and “add a game not from Steam”. This will prompt you to start searching for the “.exe” file installed by Amazon and Lutris.
Be sure to change the drop-down menu from “.desktop” applications to “All Files” only. Then go to where Lutris is located by default (for us it is ~/Deck/Games/amazon/) and select the .exe file.
After that, start the game mode and go to your library. Now it should be located under applications other than Steam. Before launching, go to the settings menu and select “Compatibility”. This will allow you to enable Proton to play the game.
Warning about saving a file
If you already have a saved game, you should continue playing in desktop mode. Proton will not consider Wine or any other save files you have unless you copy them manually after the first run.
