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You should technically be able to run the exe with proton (assuming, you're talking about Windows games). Maybe Steam does some extra work like setting certain environment variables (see https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton#runtime-config-options for a list).
Or you could just run non-steam games through Steam
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=ehOZwqOXEtk
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Also adding Lutris, it’s a wrapper for wine, and with it, you can download game normally like you would in windows, run the installer and then play it.
I've done this a couple of times, and let me tell you, it's a journey.
General info
when I did this, I stored all my games on a generic drive that I wanted to easily access from both windows and Linux. Lutris / Wine would usually expect every game to sit in its own prefix, but since every prefix uses multiple hundreds of MB and makes folder structures annoying to navigate, I instead opted to use my default prefix (~/.wine) for literally everything. While this probably has downsides, it worked for me most of the time.
In this default prefix, through the wineconfig, I added my data drive as an additional D: mount to make Installation paths identical to how they'd be on windows, even if it doesn't really matter. I also mounted library folders like "Documents" to the same folder Windows would access to (hopefully) use the same save files between Windows and Linux. For games saving to AppData, I had to create manual links from the main folder on the data drive into the AppData folder in the wine prefix.
Installing Games
I'll assume you're either getting clean steam files from "the forum" or using repacks that need installing. In the latter case, I'd usually not bother adding the installer to lutris, it seemed more effort than needed. I'd rather open the terminal, navigate to ~/.wine, put the installer .exe in the same folder, and run something along the lines of WINEPREFIX=$(pwd) installer.exe. Specifying the prefix made sure that no new prefix would be created. Obviously you can also run the same command anywhere else on the filesystem, just remember to actually specify the prefix you want to use.
At that point, the installer should hopefully open. Proceed like usual and specify the installation path (in my case something like "D:/Games/Name of Game" or whatever). Best case scenario, everything works. Worst case, something breaks or fails, at which point id just boot into a windows install I had on the side, installed there, then booted back to Linux. You could probably achieve the same with a vm, but I never tested that.
Running games
Once you've survived the installation, you can add the game to your lutris library. Remember to set the wine prefix to the default one. You'll also want to mess around with different runners ("wine" basically never, "lutris-wine" sometimes, "proton" or "proton-ge" for steam games, and there's plenty more) and environment variables (enabling DXVK and DXVK_ASYNC for performance and other stuff). Since every game is totally different and requires different flags, I skipped all tinkering and went straight to https://www.protondb.com, where you can look up the game and the additional info other people use on the game. Transfer that info into your lutris game settings, and then hopefully things work.
What if they don't
Oh man, this happened a lot. Let me preface that I was on arch, so my troubles might not apply to you. When games don't launch, you can right click the game in lutris and look into the wine logs, where you'll most often find some form of error. Sometimes it's file access permissions (save location read only, game exe not executable, or whatever else), wrong or missing environment variables, or (for me this was the most frequent) problems with some media decoding component of the system that simply couldn't decode the media files no matter how many additional codec packages I installed.
At some point I just gave up and went back to windows. Gaming on Linux is a fucking handful and, for someone with a full time job and at most 2-3 hours of game time per day, spending 2 thirds of that trying to get shit to run wasn't a good investment of my time once the novelty of "wow I'm doing such cool and nerdy stuff" wore off. So I'm hoping this helps you and your experience will be better than mine.
I didn't proof read this, so no guarantee for perfect grammar or content. In addition, some helpful subreddits are /r/LinuxCrackSupport, /r/CrackSupport/ and to an extent /r/linux_gaming/. You can find some limited degree of help and information there too.
Let me know if you have further questions.
Edit: corrected helpful subreddits
This is a very comprehensive guide! Thanks for taking the time.
IMO, it's so much easier to just use Lutris to install your game. Never had an issue with any repacks.
Setup your prefixes in Lutris, point to the installer, then install. After installation is done, just change that same setup to point to the .exe game launcher instead of the installer
What did you do when the error logs say "wrong or missing environment variables"? I'm having that error a LOT
I don't remember running into this issue myself, but the error is clear enough that I'd know where to start. If there are environment variables set, remove them one by one until the game starts. If there are none set, or if step one didn't help, go into protondb and see what flags the others are using to get the game running.
Generally, when encountering any sort of issue, trying a different runner can also already solve the issues. It really is a hit or miss process, and in some cases, a game will simply not run at all.
Am not the pirate that I used to be, but I've found that they pretty much work. Cracks seem fine, repacks make a couple of assumptions that tend not to be true on Wine:
how folders are arranged
leaving out all the additional installers for things like .net, because obviously everyone already has them
I'd usually make a new folder for 'what you're installing', create a new launcher for it in Lutris selecting that folder as the base directory, and then use the 'run different executable' option in Lutris to start the installer. Once that completes, you should be able to adjust the config to what you've installed, see if it works. Be prepared to try lots of additional installations with WineTricks, particularly .net and directx.
(To be fair, a lot of legit older games need the same in order to work, if you're installing from CD / DVD and things.)
Make sure your ancient laptop has vulkan support, if it doesn't you can't use dxvk or vkd3d and have to use the directx->opengl wrapper in wine (wined3d), performance will not be good with it and you'd probably be better off with windows.
Note: you can still run older or 2d games with ease, 30 to 80% performance observed on same laptop
Add the games executeable as non steam game
Iirc you can install games or apps from an .exe installer using lutris. You can check !linuxcracksupport@lemmy.world for help with pirating games with Linux.
I use bottles to run the installers, and then have steam do the rest. It works shockingly well.
Ok, so I managed to run the installer with the help of bottles and it seemingly succeeds, but "add to steam" does nothing and when I try the add new game option in steam, the game is nowhere to be found.
It's like the installer is trying to tell the system where the game is but only bottles is listening and it can't actually run it 🙁
When installing the game with bottles make sure you mount the folder you want the game to install to as a drive in bottles. Then I point steam at the folder by adding a non-steam game and forcing the use of proton support in the options for the non-steam game in steam.
Bottles as flatpak is an amazing way to run windows dependent software isolated from your main system. Flatpak will automatically bundle Wine and 32 bit library runtimes and bottles packages in DXVK (no need to enable multilib). If you use ProtonUPQT you can even get the bleeding edge GE wine as a runner for your programs in bottles.
I pirate because Steam is a garbage program for playing games and Valve is an evil company. So I pay for games in Steam but will just pirate a Non DRM-Non steam affiliated copy of the game to backup on my own local storage.