Can you play Genshin Impact on the Steam deck?

The Steam Deck is the hottest new portable PC that lets you play your Steam games on a Nintendo Switch-like device. The portability of this device also makes it an attractive option for playing other non-Steam games that require stronger specs, such as: B. Genshin Impact.

While Genshin Impact is available on mobile devices, this mode features degraded graphics and a chunkier touchscreen interface. For a better Genshin Impact on the go, some players might want to play it on the Steam deck instead.

Although Genshin Impact is not available through Steam, there are a few ways to run the game on the Steam Deck. However, this requires you to jump through some hoops. This guide will show you how to play Genshin Impact on the Steam deck.

How to get Genshin Impact on Steam Deck

Download from Windows

The first method is to download Windows onto your device and run it as a separate operating system instead of the SteamOS that comes by default on the device. This is because SteamOS is Linux based and Genshin Impact uses an anti-cheat that doesn’t run well on Linux devices. However, the Steam Deck is essentially a portable computer, so it is possible to download Windows on it.

First, follow this guide to install Windows on your Steam Deck. This covers everything you need to know to safely get this operating system running on your device.

Then visit the HoYoverse official website and install the game as you would on a normal PC. Once downloaded, you can run Genshin Impact on your Steam deck.

If you don’t have the resources to download Windows onto your Steam deck, you might be out of luck. There is no officially supported way to play Genshin Impact without downloading Windows unless you can disable HoYoverse’s anti-cheat for use over Linux. However, this is not supported and you risk getting your account banned.