Recently, I came across an app called GameVault on r/selfhosted and wanted to share it here. It's like a customized Steam-like platform for games stored on your seedbox or fileserver you can run yourself on your server.

You and your family can then use the Windows app to download them, track your playtime and so on. The idea is pretty neat and like Jellyfin/Kodi but for videogames.

The developers cannot officially promote piracy, so they have a scary disclaimer on their page, but the app works perfectly fine and everything is formulated "tounge in cheek"-ish.

Personally, I have about 25 "alternatively obtained" games on my seedbox-server by now, and it's working fine for me and my kids.

If you have basic Linux-server knowledge, setting it up is not difficult. For complete beginners, there's a guide on their website: https://gamevau.lt/docs/intro

Side note: I'm definitely not the dev, and my username is just an anagram for that by coincidence.

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[–] TheChancePants@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

As a guy who has a lot of experience with old emulated Nintendo games and things like that, I keep a bunch of ROMs on a cloud storage service for backup. But all those files add up and eat storage space. For a service like this, do you just have the installers themselves stored for easy installing/uninstalling? How big are those files, for storage purposes? I have a lot of PC games, but, you know, I don’t like paying for all of them. Are you able to have tons of “alternative” Steam games or does storage space run out quick?

[–] Shere_Khan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 years ago

This program is used to transfer your games from your own server, to your computer. So you can store as many games as you can afford to.