Junk Store is an existing plugin for the Steam Deck homebrew launcher Decky Loader, and its purpose is simple: it allows installation of games from GOG and the Epic Games Store. It was recently announced that Junk Store would be releasing on Steam as standalone software, allowing players to play any and all games from competitors, with developer SDK Innovation saying it lets you "install and launch games directly in Game Mode without switching to Desktop or relying on external launchers."
That all sounds pretty convenient, but the big question is whether Valve would be cool with it: the nature of Junk Store would've made it the first product available on Steam that changes the functionality of Steam itself.
Readers: Valve was not cool with it. The Junk Store steam page went live earlier this month, but has now been unceremoniously yoinked from the Steam storefront (first noticed by SteamDeckHQ).
The decision to make Junk Store a paid application on Steam was somewhat unpopular with existing users, almost entirely because this would have been a paid-for version of software that until now has been free. To be fair to the team behind it, however, the existing free plugin was being left as-is (with GOG integration to come), and a Q&A points out "while it would be nice to give it all away free, the reality is that hiring developers costs money." But all those arguments are moot now.
That same Q&A addressed the uncertainty over Valve's position, coming to some conclusions that haven't aged well. "It was not explicitly stated, but someone at Valve reviewed the coming soon page and said 'This is good to go'. We interpret this as: 'all systems go'. We have not had any official communication from Valve outside of this process. We choose to be optimistic and consider this a nod of approval."
Wups. The Junk Store page is now gone, and the Junk Store team have gone to ground for the moment. Existing links to the Steam Page will just take you to the Steam homepage.
The plus side is that, if you're comfortable messing around with homebrew, you can get the existing version of Junk Store up-and-running. "This will not go anywhere," says the team. "It’s free, it’s open and it’s our gift to the community [...] currently GOG is not free, but it is 'source available'. When we are ready to release it as free and open source we will."
Valve does have a long and proud history of allowing others to play with its creations, but it's not as lenient about the Steam store itself. To Valve, there's a big difference between a sanctioned remake project like Black Mesa and a piece of software that unifies all the games you didn't buy on Steam with your Steam library. It's clear, however, that some percentage of Steam Deck users really want to be able to play games from competing stores on their hardware without jumping through annoying hoops. And if Valve won't let the community sort that out for itself, maybe it should think about an official solution.
