Steam player

Goldberg Emulator

This isn't an emulator in the way you might be expecting for a small games section. It performs a similar job to Wine and actually occupies a similar legal netherworld, because Goldberg Emulator has been designed to remove the requirement that many Steam games have on Steam's own network API. This isn't a problem when you're using Steam to launch your games, but it's a problem if you want to unshackle your games collection from any Steam requirements. This is something that should be feasible when many games run as executables from their own directories, and you can even download games directly without the Steam client using the SteamCMD command-line tool. However, games won't get very far if they need Steam's network API to work, and that's where Goldberg Emulator helps.

Installation is usually as simple as replacing the libsteam_api.so file that's bundled with your Steam game with the resultant libsteam_api.so that the emulator package builds. You need to make sure you match the original's 32- or 64-bit architecture, and you can find the location of each game if you still have the Steam client installed by right-clicking on the game, selecting Properties, and switching to the Local Files tab. The only real difference you should notice is that game saves are now in a Goldberg folder off your home directory, and you can edit global emulator parameters in the Settings folder to change things like your account name and the network port where each game listens. The emulator doesn't affect a game's DRM, which means some games may not work, but many Steam games don't use DRM outside of their requirement for Steam, so it should work with many. In tests, we found it worked well, especially with slightly older games. It's great to know that if someday Steam drops support for these games, or even if Steam goes away, we'll still be able to play these legally bought old classics, even without Valve's infrastructure.

Project Website

https://gitlab.com/Mr_Goldberg/goldberg_emulator

If you've been looking for a way to download and play networked Steam games without the Steam client, Goldberg Emulator is for you.

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