Good lord this thread. The amount of people in here blaming the poor instructions when they understand nothing about Steam Tinker Launcher is astounding. These instructions worked perfectly fine for me to get this running.
I’m an absolute Linux noob and I could figure this out. If you don’t know the basics of STL nor what some of these introductory terms mean don’t bother with this.
This isn’t advanced stuff, but definitely requires more than day one knowledge. I’m a trucker so time isn’t something i have a lot of, my presumption was that people should be at least familiar with ProtonUp-Qt, Steam Tinker Launch, and ProtonTricks. Glad it worked. But i should warn you, its worked fine for most of my games, sometimes i get errors that can be solved by either deleting the WeMod folder in Roaming or reinstalling. But a few games, no matter what i did i could not get past the errors. Largely the troubleshooting process for Windows, minus anything related to anti-virus, will help you sort through any issues, just keep in mind that most games should work, but not all. Also you only need to do the -vulkan step if you are getting spammed with Javascript error popups when launching WeMod. Most games its not a necessary step, just so happened that a lot of my games that i was testing when i did this did need it.
Hi. First of all, welcome to gaming on Linux!
You need to…
Oh, the entitlement. Dude, the guy who made the guide doesn’t need to do ■■■■. He already did you a favor, even if he assumed some familiarity with Windows gaming on Linux, and Proton. What YOU need to do is a little bit of homework. You could start here, for example: An Introduction to Linux Gaming thanks to ProtonDB | Linux Journal I promise you that Linux (and the Deck) is pretty ■■■■■■■ cool though, as is this nearly-miraculous Proton compatibility layer. It’s also possible (I can only hope) that one day Windows (and all other closed-source OS’es) will go away and something open-source like Linux will be the “standard” OS if not the “power-user gamer” OS. But anyway, there’s a long way to go for that, but in the meantime, you CAN game on Linux. Modding and such is a little trickier though (AT THIS TIME… hopefully not forever!), but doable.
Very quick overview: So for many years, Windows and Linux had their own games and their own API’s and the only way to run one on the other was via a virtual machine which consumed a lot of resources and usually made access to 3D hardware limited or impossible, which pretty much ruled out anything remotely approaching AAA games/titles. But then along came something called “WINE” (which stands for “Wine Is Not an Emulator” (it’s a “recursive acronym” inspired by GNU standing for “Gnu’s Not Unix”, Gnu is a set of open source utilities, go google) which basically brought the Windows API to Linux, so at that time you could at least run things like Microsoft Office (standard Windows apps) and SOME games (with sometimes limited 3D support). So that gimped along for a while until a thing called Proton came out, which Steam then incorporated. So what Proton is, is basically WINE but customized for Linux gaming. So then newer versions of Proton came out, but it turned out that some games worked better with old Proton versions so they incorporated a way to switch (on a per-game or global basis) Proton versions via something called a “WINE prefix” or just “prefix”. Basically the prefix (inside compatdata) is JUST the Windows stuff via Proton and NOT the game install nor the save files. It’s split this way so you can switch Proton versions (or just use the native Linux version for the games that have them) without reinstalling everything. But if you install DLL’s (like the one wemod needs), those DO stay with the prefix and you have to reinstall them if you switch prefixes. Anyway, while all this was happening, the Linux API kept slowly changing and breaking some games, and the Windows API did not. So as it turns out, the Windows API is a more stable gaming API to develop on EVEN ON LINUX and often runs games faster than the Windows or native Linux version!! Which is ridic. But anyway. Along comes Vulkan and DXVK (compat layer between vulkan and DX 3d API), which had first class support in Proton and on Windows as well, so a lot of games started developing against THAT api. But you have to google these things and read up, I’m out of time. Good luck
Hi @BrandonKingM !
I followed your guide and went almost to the end ! But unfortunately, there’s one step that cannot be done, due (in my opinion) to a WeMod app update.
When you try to download the WeMod offline installer (by following your link, or the one given on the support forum), it automatically download the very last version of this installer and, when you arrive at the moment you precisely need to install the WeMod app, it doesn’t work, saying :
Installation has failed
Please re-run this installer as a normal user instead of “Run as administrator”.
So, basically, I think it’s a “feature” from the very last version of the offline installer, would you be very kind to upload the installer YOU used (the 8.3.15) ?
That might do the trick, I searched almost everywhere to be able to launch the installer as a normal user, or to completely launch Winetricks as a normal user, but couldn’t find anything…And, as you already know, the standrad installer won’t work, as you need to be connected so the installer can download the files so…
Or there could be another completely different workaround…
Would you please help me (and probably some other people experiencing the same issue) ?
Thank you in advance
This isn’t a good guide at all. You explain zero of the steps. IE install WeMod. You explain zero about how to actually do the install using proton etc.
you lose steam tinker as the only program then list 3 other apps you are using to change config.
Please update a step by step as every one who has tried this seams to stop when they can’t install WeMod. Tinker is easy and the steps you did explain are easy but your missing entire parts of what you actually did.
Please update 
we get it, your smarter than us.
thank you for the overlong explanation that literally gave zero info on the actual problem most of the commenters are having. Maybe save yourself sometime and skip the diatribe and actually try to help.
Jo Brandon… tough thing.
@first thanks for takin time and showing us this proof of concept.
Im in IT, but had until couple of days before no contact with proton or my steamdeck at all.
I think a lot of things change constantly and way too fast (protonreleases, wemod releases, gamereleases …) Doing the things only as “described” without further understanding will lead everyone hitting a wall.
Grabbed all that instruction fragments and tried to realise what its for. In the End it wasn´t a great deal at all. But finally it didn`t work…not because of Brandons instructions, but wemod doesnt recognise the Game as 64bit app. Diggin deeper leads to headaches.
As long as WeMod doesnt push the things for Steamdeck, I dont think there will ever be a reliable instruction to get running this. I read all the replies here and followed Brandon´s breadcrumbs here… my conclusion is, that WeMod isnt cooperative in any way. There is no interest in progression, help or whatever and there is the culprit… not Brandon.
Look by yourself what the answers are here in the forums when Brandon asked something. If I would see someone is trying to invest time to give my Product more benefit, I would try to help him as much as possible… not with empty phrases (support level 0).
And now ask yourself whats the point investing more time in this dead end?!?
@YaVadda WeMod can’t provide support for this because it isn’t even designed for Linux based Operating Systems at this time.
If WeMod supported the use of the app on Linux/Steam Deck, then sure, we’d look into it further.
As of this time though, WeMod is currently for Windows Operating Systems. That’s not to say that WeMod won’t look into Mac/Linux based Operating Systems in future, but at this current time, there’s no way to provide support for operating systems that WeMod isn’t designed for yet.
Did you install it with Proton-6.19-GE-2? Proton 7+ has administrator UAC on automatically with no way to disable it, but in Proton 6, it works as a regular user. If you still get that go to Regedit, and follow the path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System, then change the value of EnableLUA from 1 to 0.
I haven’t been able to get WeMod running on every game, but most games I’ve tried to install it on works almost perfectly. Main issue is just how freaking long it takes to install it on multiple prefixes, that’s why I’m hoping sonic2kk is able to integrate its installation into Steam Tinker Launch as a feature, like Vortex mod manager and MO2. If the process can be automated, it’ll be a lot easier.
Made a video, hope it helps people to follow along better. I know screenshots aren’t optimal, but video making/editing isn’t something I’m very good at. Took me all ■■■■■■■ day to figure out how to cut 20 seconds in the areas i put in my password.
Thank you for the guide my friend, hope someday we can get WeMod inside DECKY, so we can do everything easier
A launcher is being developed, it just had a big update today.
great news, thank you for sharing, didn’t read it before, hope it gets better and better, thank you for the info
So, I’ve followed the instructions on the video guide and got the dotnet framework 4.8 installed without any issues. I then switched the proton version to 6-19-GE2 as instructed and did another one time run of the Uninstaller to install Wemod (WeMod-8.9.0.exe) but nothing happens. I wait for a long time but the Wemod installation screen never pops up and nothing gets installed. I’ve made sure that the winecfg is set to Windows 7 the entire time. Anything else I should try or is this an issue with the WeMod-8.9.0.exe?
Are you using Proton-6.19-GE-2 to run the WeMod installer? That error has to do with how Proton 7+ handles UAC administrator permissions. But i no longer recommend directly using the installer, instead open it with 7zip and extract the wemod_bin folder from inside the exe and use the WeMod.exe from the wemod_bin folder, you can use it for every game and it bypasses the need to install WeMod to each and every single prefix, so all you need to install is DotNet Framework 4.8 using Proton GE 7-35 and Winecfg set to Windows 7
There is a Linux installer/launcher now for WeMod, which is what taught me about the wemod_bin folder. It works mostly, but isn’t always reliable with the DotNet install, but if you use it you can install DotNet yourself and add a blank .wemod_installer file inside the prefix, next to the drive_c folder, which tells the installer, to ignore the DotNet install.
Tried following your instructions and when I tried installing the dotnet48 using uninstaller, nothing happens after I open the file the installer is not popping-up. Any suggestions on this?
You don’t have to use uninstaller, i like to because that’s the only way it shows up in the programs list. What windows is set in Winecfg? And what Proton are you using?
Hi @BrandonKingM , Thanks for your tutorial and efforts! I tried to follow the steps in the tutorial but I got stuck in running the uninstaller. I selected the Framework 4.8 exe file several times but nothing happened. Same happens when I select the Wemod installer. Can you please help? Some photos are added. Thanks!