This guide will teach you how to play your Xbox Game Pass games on your Steam Deck.
Unfortunately, with Xbox Game Pass requiring you to have a Windows device you can’t easily run these games on your Steam Deck.
One of the easiest ways to get around this limitation is to stream these games to your Steam Deck using Xbox Cloud Gaming. But, of course, you can always dual-boot Windows and play the games natively on your device that way.
Using the Xbox Cloud Gaming service, you can stream any of your Game Pass games to your Steam Deck. You won’t be restricted to just PC Game Pass games.
Of course, for this to work smoothly, you will need decent internet and a strong Wi-Fi connection to your device.
Preparing your Steam Deck to Stream Xbox Game Pass Games
In this section, we will walk you through the process of getting your Steam Deck ready to play Xbox Game Pass games.
Since we rely on the Xbox Cloud Gaming service on your Steam Deck to stream these games, we will need to install the Microsoft Edge web browser.
Moving to Desktop Mode
1. Before we can install Microsoft Edge to your Steam Deck, you must change to desktop mode.
To start changing to desktop mode, open the Steam menu. To open this menu, press the STEAM button on your device or by tapping “Steam menu” in the bottom-left corner.
2. With the Steam menu open, change to the “Power” menu by selecting the “Power” option at the bottom of the list.
3. Finally, tap the “Switch to desktop” option to change to desktop mode.
Installing Microsoft Edge to the Steam Deck
4. Now that we are in desktop mode, we will want to open the “Discover Center” by tapping the shopping bag icon.
This store will allow us to easily install the Microsoft Edge browser that we will be using to access our Xbox Game Pass games on the Steam Deck.
5. With the Discover Center open, use the search box at the top-left corner to look for “microsoft edge“.
You can bring up the keyboard on the Steam Deck desktop by pressing the STEAM and X buttons simultaneously.
6. You should now see “Microsoft Edge” at the top of the list (1.).
Once you have found this entry, click/tap the “Install” button (2.).
Adjusting the Microsoft Edge Flatpak Settings
7. For your Steam Deck controls to work with Xbox Cloud Gaming, we will need to make some changes to the installation.
To do this, you must open the terminal on your Steam Deck.
Start this process by clicking the bottom-left corner to open the start menu on your device.
8. With the start menu open, you must hover over the “System” (1.) entry.
In the pop-up menu, click the “Konsole” application to open the terminal (2.).
9. With the terminal open, you will want to use the following command.
flatpak --user override --filesystem=/run/udev:ro com.microsoft.EdgeThis command overrides the settings for Microsoft Edge to access the Steam Deck controls while you are streaming your Xbox Game Pass games.
Adding Microsoft Edge as a Non-Steam Game
10. Back on the desktop, you will want to open the desktop Steam client.
To open the desktop client, click/tap the Steam icon.
11. With the Steam desktop client open, click the “ADD A GAME” option (1.).
In the box that appears, click the “Add a Non-Steam Game” option (2.).
12. In the “Add a Game” list, scroll till you find the option labeled “Microsoft Edge” and ensure that checkbox is ticked (1.).
Finally, click the “ADD SELECTED PROGRAMS” button (2.).
Changing Microsoft Edge to Xbox Game Pass on the Steam Deck
13. With Microsoft Edge now added to Steam, you will need to adjust it to launch into the Xbox Cloud Gaming website on your Steam Deck.
To make these changes, you must find “Microsoft Edge” in your library and select it.
14. Once the Steam page is open for Microsoft Edge, click the cog icon (1.).
Next, click the “Properties” option (2.).
15. Within the properties page, the first thing you want to change is the application’s name. You can adjust the name using the textbox at the top of the page.
In our case, we will be naming this application “Xbox Game Pass” on our Steam Deck, but you could also name it “Xbox Cloud Gaming” or anything else.
16. Your next step is to adjust the “Launch Options” by adding the following to the end of the options. In particular, you want to add this just after the text ‘"@@u" "@@"‘.
--window-size=1024,640 --force-device-scale-factor=1.25 --device-scale-factor=1.25 --kiosk "https://www.xbox.com/play"These changes make the window open size “1024,640“. It also adjusts the scale factor from “1” to “1.25“.
Finally, we use the “kiosk” option so that Edge on our Steam Deck will load up Xbox Cloud Gaming when this Steam entry is launched.
17. Once you have finished with these changes, you can now change back to gaming mode.
From your desktop, click the “Return to Gaming Mode” icon.
Find Xbox Game Pass in your Steam Deck Library
18. Now that you are back in gaming mode, change to your library using the STEAM menu.
19. Once in the Steam library, you must change to the “NON-STEAM” library (1.).
Next, select “Xbox Game Pass” from within this screen (2.).
Adjusting the Control Scheme for Xbox Cloud Gaming on the Steam Deck
20. To improve your experience with Xbox Cloud Gaming on your Steam Deck, you will want to adjust the default control scheme.
Select the controller icon below to begin changing the control scheme.
21. Select the currently enabled layout with the controller settings page open to modify it.
In our case, the default control scheme was set to”Gamepad with Joystick Trackpad“,
22. Now scroll down this list until you see the option labeled “Gamepad with Mouse Trackpad“.
You can use the right trackpad to control the mouse by selecting this option.
Using this option should improve your experience when playing an Xbox Game Pass game on your Steam Deck that requires the mouse.
23. You will now see the new layout. You can use this screen to adjust it to your needs.
Otherwise, press the X button on your Steam Deck to save the layout change.
Launching Xbox Game Pass Streaming on your Steam Deck
24. At this stage, you can launch your newly set up Xbox Cloud Gaming application and start playing any of your Xbox Game Pass games on your Steam Deck.
To launch this application, you only need to tap the “Play” button.
25. When you first go to play your Xbox Game Pass games on your Steam Deck, you will be required to log in to your account.
To do this, tap the “SIGN IN” button at the top of the screen and follow the prompts.
Remember that during the login process, you can open the keyboard by pressing the STEAM and X buttons at the same time.
26. Once logged in, you can play any game available through Xbox Cloud Streaming.
If you are subscribed to Game Pass Ultimate, you can play a large amount of the Game Pass library on your Steam Deck.
27. Below, you can see that Hi-Fi Rush is streamed to our Steam Deck thanks to Xbox Cloud Streaming and Game Pass.
Conclusion
We hope you now have access to your Xbox Game Pass games on your Steam Deck.
While you can’t natively run Game Pass games without installing Windows, you can work around this using the Xbox Cloud Gaming service.
This service lets you stream your game pass games to the Steam Deck without installing Windows.
Please comment below if you experienced any issues getting this guide to work on your device.
If you found this guide helpful, be sure to check out our many other Steam Deck guides.
