Games going digital-only? Steam Deck user launches them with floppy disks

PC games are now purchased and downloaded almost exclusively in digital form – and PlayStation fans will soon have to accept that launching games by inserting a disc is becoming a thing of the past. While this is certainly convenient and space-saving, it also removes the physical aspect of gaming – and with it, a bit of nostalgia. Reddit user u/BlackIceLA wanted to bring the best of both worlds together. His solution: keep games digitally installed, but launch them using floppy disks.

Turning floppy disks into physical Steam Deck cartridges

The idea grew out of a desire to use Zaparoo on the Steam Deck. Zaparoo is software that allows games to be launched using physical media such as NFC tags, QR codes, or USB drives. Although Zaparoo technically supports SteamOS, assigning certain tags requires a smartphone app. In addition, all associations are managed by a continuously running service, making it difficult to move prepared media between different devices.

So, together with the AI assistant Claude, the user began developing an alternative. The result is Decky Links. The plugin allows both Steam and non-Steam games to be launched using physical media such as floppy disks, USB drives, NFC tags, or QR codes. Each medium simply stores the URL of the corresponding game. One example provided by the developer is „steam://run/1174180“, which launches Red Dead Redemption 2. Once the plugin detects the link, it automatically starts the associated game.

For the initial test, BlackIceLA printed temporary cover art and attached it to several floppy disks, giving them the appearance of physical game cartridges. All the user has to do is choose a game, insert the floppy disk into a USB-connected drive, and the selected title launches automatically. The game files themselves remain stored on the Steam Deck's internal storage or microSD card. That's hardly surprising, considering a standard 3.5-inch floppy disk holds just 1.44 MB of data, while modern games are often more than 100,000 times larger.

But what's the point?

In everyday use, Decky Links offers few practical advantages over launching games directly from the Steam library. However, it's not entirely without purpose. Inserting or scanning a linked medium starts the corresponding game immediately, eliminating the need to browse through your library. Since the Steam URL is stored directly on the medium itself, it can also be used across multiple properly configured devices without any additional pairing.

The real appeal, however, is giving digital games a physical presence once again. Instead of selecting a title from a long list, players can hold a real object in their hands, insert it, and launch the game that way. Decky Links is already available as an open-source project on GitHub, although a polished version that can be installed through the Decky Plugin Store has not yet been released. Anyone interested in trying it out currently has to install and configure it manually and should expect the occasional bug.