Steam

Steam is a service for distributing, buying, and playing games.

Installation methods

Steam snap

The recommended way to install Steam on Ubuntu is with the snap:

sudo snap install steam

Detailed guidance on using the Steam snap is provided in the official Steam snap documentation.

Steam deb

A Debian package is also available for Steam.

Read the official Debian wiki for instructions: Steam page on the debian wiki.

Steam Flatpak

Make sure Flatpaks are enabled on your Ubuntu system.

Install the Steam Flatpak:

flatpak install flathub com.valvesoftware.Steam

Run the Steam Flatpak:

flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam

Playing non-Steam games on Steam

There are a few options:

Add as a non-Steam game

Note
In the case of a Windows .exe file, whatever launcher you use will need to use a compatibility layer such as Wine or Proton in the background.

Using alternative launcher

1. Install a game using a launcher such as Heroic,
2. Do Add a Game → Add a Non-Steam Game in Steam
3. Select the installed game.

Directly adding an .exe

1. Download a executable of the game
2. Do Add a Game → Add a Non-Steam Game in Steam
3. Select the executable file

Using a Steam key

1. Copy the Steam key
2. Do Games → Activate a Product on Steam
3. Paste in the Steam key

FAQ

Is the snap a bad way of running Steam?

Early versions of the Steam snap had issues that were fixed in later versions.

Many people use the Steam snap today without problems.

Of course, you are free to use Steam in the other formats mentioned in this page.

Is the performance worse?

Not necessarily.

A community member did an interesting comparison between the deb and the snap in 2025.

You can find the performance results on the below post from the Ubuntu Discourse:

Steam Debian versus Steam snap: performance comparison