What is general practice for installing games from outside Steam?
Eggyhead@kbin.social to 
PC/Linux/Steam Noob here. I just got a game from GOG and I’m seeing tutorials mention Heroic, Lutris, and Wine via ProtonUp-QT as methods to get non-Steam games installed and running on Deck. Which method would you consider the easiest and most reliable for content from GOG, Ubisoft, Epic, etc…
Follow up, here's what I did:
- Desktop Mode: I installed Heroic Launcher (it handily chose a location in my games folder), and added it to my steam library.
- Game Mode: I did the change artwork stuff for Heroic, booted it, signed in and all that jazz, then installed and launched the game (Lost Ruins).
- Desktop Mode: I navigated to the (Lost Ruins) game folder and found the "start.sh" file that boots the game, then added that one to steam.
- Game Mode: Did the change artwork stuff for the game itself, and now I can add game-specific settings for it.
- (Extra) I added a "Heroic Launcher" collection to store GOG & Epic content.
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Heroic is a client for GOG and Epic Launcher, so if I install a game from there, I use Heroic.
Lutris is more generic, and has specific script installers per game, so I use Lutris as a fallback if the game is from somewhere else, or the game does not correctly work with Heroic.
Then, as a third fallback, I try to install the game with Wine directly, then add it a shortcut on Steam to benefit from Proton through Steam. In the above cases (Heroic and Lutris), they would be using their own packaged version of Wine/Proton, so it's worth to try it before giving up.
I would recommend using bottles as the last fallback instead of just wine. Makes it easier since it automatically creates a wine prefix for each game/launcher
Same method but I run wine in lutris. I would add to use the steam id of the games as name in steam to get steamdeck controler config related to the game and to look into the the plugin "steamgriddb" to add images and logo to imported games