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@vsTerminus
Last active August 25, 2025 21:46
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Launching alternative and/or companion apps with Steam on Linux

Steam + Mod Managers

Problem

You have a Steam game and you want to manage mods for it with ModOrganizer (or similar).

In order for MO2 to apply mods you need Steam to launch MO2 and then MO2 to launch the game.

Solution

  1. Install ModOrganizer 2.5
  2. Install the Visual C++ redist mentioned on the MO2 NexusMods page into your game's prefix

For example, for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide

❯ WINEPREFIX=~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/1361210/pfx wine Downloads/VC_redist.x64.exe                                                                                                                                                         terminus@skynet
  1. Put this in your Launch Options and adjust the path to your ModOrganizer exe.

    eval $( echo "%command%" | sed "s/proton waitforexitandrun.*/proton run '/home/yourname/Games/MO2/ModOrganizer.exe'/" )

  2. Launch your game normally

If everything is right it should launch into MO2 instead of your game, allowing you to manage your mods and then launch the game from there.

Steam + Companion Apps

Sometimes you have games that benefit from "companion apps", or things that run alongside the game and provide some added benefit. This is realy common in flight simulators especially.

Problem 1

Steam won't launch your game if any other apps are already running in the prefix

Problem 2

Steam will kill all of your companion apps when you close your game

Solution

Put this in your Launch Options for your game:

eval $( echo "%command%" | sed "s/proton waitforexitandrun/proton run/" )

This forces steam to use a different "Proton Verb". By default it uses "waitforexitandrun" which causes it to behave as described above. But if you force it to use "run" instead, those problems go away.

With this in place, Steam will happy launch your game even if other apps are already running in the prefix (as long as everything is using the same version of Proton!), and it won't kill those apps when the game closes.

I recommend using Lutris (or another launcher) to configure your other apps so you can launch them with the same proton version as steam easily.

This is especially useful for things like TrackIR which needs to start first otherwise the game might not detect it.

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