Arr guys,
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.
I really liked the concept of this and had high expectation, but I just tried this out following their documentation and not a fan so I’ll have to pass / find a better alternative if one exists.
The docker-compose.yml given seems to cause the containers to be lacking permissions to save images and even the DB: logs show images can’t be created/saved, restarting the container wipes the DB. No files created at all on the mounted volumes paths. The volume for game files works great though so that’s confusing. I can probably troubleshoot that but this is the first container I’ve ever had such an issue with so I won’t bother particularly due to the next points:
On the app itself I was pretty disappointed that it doesn’t at the very least extract the files for you, and won’t even skip all the manual junk for direct play games that I took the time to name properly with (DP) on the archive files. The reason given is there may be too many manual steps/variations for installation but direct plays don’t need any of that.
Given the manual steps required I’ll stick to copy/pasting the files off my server to my local games folder, the games themselves being added to steam if I really need to go that far with them.
There’s a Discord server (https://discord.gg/NEdNen2dSu) where you can join for any support you need.
Regarding permission issues, it’s crucial to note that the Container utilizes User 1000 (for Docker Security Reasons). Therefore, ensure that you change the ownership of your directories to user 1000…
Your dissatisfaction will vanish once this release is available.
I’ll just hope it accepts an environment variable for user/group ID because on my server 1000 is not the appropriate user to have permissions to these files. Will find out next time I give it a try.
You can use the user directive in your compose
Yeah thats what im saying, im not really sure what problem this program is fixing.
I was hoping it would be fixing my having to manually add games to steam after manually copying the files over to a PC and have a nice catalogue for them. But it just seems like it generates more work than it saves.