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Update 10/16/24 - It has been confirmed that Junk Store was removed from the Steam store due to unsupported features and modifying the Steam client's behavior, interface, and/or code.
There has been a lot of controversy this week in the Steam Deck community, and the trend seems to be continuing. Recently, Junk store announced that they were going to be making a paid version of their Decky Loader plugin, which operates similarly to Heroic Games Launcher, and launching it on the Steam store. In an announcement posted on the r/JunkStore subreddit, the team acknowledged that this was going to be a challenge, but they felt justified with this rebuilt product becoming a paid application that can be purchased on Steam. Unfortunately, it seems to have hit a snag.
For some context, Junk Store started off as a plugin for the Decky Loader Plugin Framework on the Steam Deck. It allows you to access your Epic Game Store library through Game Mode, making it easier to download and access your games on Deck with less hassle. You do need to install Decky Loader's framework first, which allows these plugins to run, but there is a large assortment of plugins to try out.
The team was able to get to product on Steam and even get a Steam store page available, but today, I noticed that the page is no longer available. When searching or trying to go to the direct link, it will not appear and take me back to the main store page. While this doesn't surprise me as much, I was actually more surprised that it got a store page at all, it's still worth mentioning.
I have reached out to Junk Store for comment on this development, but have yet to receive a response.
The decision to go to a paid application on Steam has been a controversial one. While some people are very excited and supportive, there are others who feel that this leaves a sour taste going from a free and open source plugin to a closed off paid application. In the Q&A section of their announcement, they do mention that the current plugin will NOT be taken down and still be usable and that GOG integration will be released as free and open source when they are ready, so you will still have the option to download it for free if preferred.
However, pricing the tool will be difficult. I have seen commenters saying anything above $10 or $15 will be too much and a lot saying they don't want to pay at all. There are plans for new features and storefronts, as well as cloud saves, that the team wants to implement, but they need the funding to hire a team and specialized programmers to help.
Here is the full Q&A from their Reddit post:
Q: Will this be free?
A: No. This is a completely rebuilt product, using different technologies. The code is not open source. We have had to reimplement everything that Decky provided and more. We need funding to hire developers to provide the features the community wants.
Q: How much will it cost?
A: This is a very tough question. Ask yourself, what is it worth and what value does this add to the user experience? What we aim to do is gauge interest in this project based on wish listed numbers. This will allow us to price it as aggressively as possible while still being able to achieve our goals of hiring a team to take Junk Store to the next level. While it would be nice to give it all away free, the reality is that hiring developers costs money.
Q: When will it be released?
A: When it’s ready. We do not want to rush a half baked product out the door. If you’ve been using Junk Store and followed the progress on the project then you will know that I take a lot of pride in my work. I will not deliver a sub par user experience because I want to get something out quickly. We are still only a team of two, so we ask that you please be patient.
Q: Does this mean that Valve has blessed the project?
A: It’s hard to officially say. 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. It certainly wasn’t “knock it off!”
Q: What about existing purchases made via creator platforms?
A: We have gone to great lengths to ensure your existing purchases will be compatible with the Steam version. Once we get an idea of how many users are interested in purchasing this product we can adjust our generosity towards existing supporters in kind. We will endeavour to do what is fair, and more if we can. We are gamers too, we dislike greed as much as you do.
Q: What will happen to the current decky plugin and source code?
A: This will not go anywhere. It’s free, it’s open and it’s our gift to the community. We will aim to maintain compatibility between the two versions for as long as it’s viable. We have already invested a lot of time and effort to ensure that the extensions will be compatible.
Q: What about the current Gog source code, when can we have that?
A: When we are ready to release it. Currently Gog is not free, but it is “source available”. When we are ready to release it as free and open source we will.
Q: What about new features or store fronts?
A: As you can imagine, the rewrite and retooling has taken a huge amount of time and effort. We still have plans to add more features and store fronts, but our attention is not on that right now. We are still a small unfunded team (two people) doing all of this on our own time and money. We hope that with the Steam release it will allow us to hire the team we so desperately need to improve production speed.
Q: Will this have cloud saves?
A: This is still the same can of worms we have been talking about all along. There is currently super experimental support with huge risks associated with it. We aim to provide this at some point as a stop gap measure while we build up our resources to hire specialised programmers to help with this task.
Q: Will I be able to migrate from the decky version to the Steam version?
A: Yes, this is already functional in the alpha version we are testing on steam. It will require a lot of testing because we do not want users to lose any data through this process.
Junk Store team - Subreddit Post
This is going to be an uphill battle though, and we will follow up on this story once we have some answers from the Junk Store team.
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What a terrible article. What exactly is junk store? What the hell is decky loader? Stan Lee said every comic was someone's first comic and this was a terrible first comic.
Thank you for the feedback!
Decky Loader is a plugin framework that can be injected on the Steam Deck, allowing you to run third party plugins that do various different things that Steam doesn't outright support. Junk Store is one of those plugins, which allows you to access your Epic and GOG libraries in the Steam Deck Game Mode.
I genuinely understand a paid version. I haven’t made my mind up yet on what I’d pay for it, but I’m not saying I wouldn’t pay for it if it came at a reasonable price. It’s a kind of sloppy situation, but overall I fundamentally understand needing funds to hire a team to develop (or redevelop) a better experience. I get quite a few people are mad over it being a paid version (which confuses me because just don’t buy it? Use the free one that’ll supposedly remain), but I also get money is needed for an experienced team which is needed to make a better service. I like that that’s a forthcoming reason: “Hey, we need money to make this better for you, so we are making a paid version to raise funds to do something we don’t know how to do to REALLY make this better.” I’m not someone who gets too hung up on stuff, but I kinda get it.
Seems to ke the better way they could have handled thos would have been simply to ask for donations and then gave a supporter tier in the application that can get new features sooner or the like
I used to only use Epic for any games that were on both Epic and Steam. I liked that the game company got a larger share of the purchase than they did on Steam. But then the Steam Deck came out. After spending a while weekend trying to get Tiny Tina's Wonderlands to with in it from the Epic store, I gave up and just bought the Steam version. I now only buy steam versions so it will work on the Steam Deck. I also have purchased Cyberpunk and some others on both platforms due to this. Therefore, any price for this via the Steam store that is lower than buying a whole second game is worth it.
Bummer. I was fine will paying a small fee if Epic and GoG were all. I would’ve paid more to have all stores. But to have convenience for Epic and GoG only while having to tinker with other stores on my own. I wouldn’t pay more than $15 for that either. But I’d absolutely pay up for all of the major ones which mostly just adds Ubisoft and EA. I can do this on my own, the convenience would be nice but eh whatever I mostly use steam anyway.
"The team was able to get to product on Steam and even get a Steam store page available"
"free and open source plugin to a closed off paid application"
Who talks like this?
Who calls having a paid version a paid application?
All products on steam have a store page unless removed.
In short, it got a steam page, you don't know why and it got removed and you don't know why. Amazing. This is so wordy for how uninformative it is. If it wasn't for the quoted reddit post, this would not be worth mentioning. Also, why is there no link to the post directly?
I will admit the first sentence you mentioned could have been worded better, but the second one is accurate. It is a new, fully re-written application to make sure the dependencies on Decky Loader aren't needed anymore.
I reported this because it is news and a development over something that does impact the Steam Deck community. The link to the r/JunkStore post with the Q&A is linked already. It's the first hyperlink, with the second one being a direct link to their store page.
I'm not a big fan of this.
Having a paid version doesn't mean you can't also make it open source.
People would still pay for convenience and to support the project even if you could see the effort to install it manually for free.
As for why this removal might have happened, it certainly seems weird to have an app that directly promotes other stores on Steam, but I don't know.
Still, not going to buy this if it comes out. Feels like some forking action might be coming if more people feel like this isn't the way to go.
This whole ordeal has been a bit weird. The open source plugin will remain available, from my understanding, but I think they are treating this like a separate program.
Honestly, I am not sure completely what is going on or what will happen. I have yet to receive a response from JS.