Steam ROM Manager

Overview

Steam ROM Manager (SRM) is a super flexible tool for adding non-Steam games to Steam in bulk and managing their artwork assets and controller templates. Added games could be ROMs for emulators, games from other stores such as Epic or GOG, or even not games at all. Have you always wanted your notes from junior year as a category in steam? If so that's pretty weird! But now it's possible.

For an overview of how SRM works see here. There is plenty of documentation available in the app's built in FAQ and documentation, and if you need further help there are expert users to be found on the SGDB discord under the Steam ROM Manager category and the SRM subreddit.

Check out the releases page for compiled downloads for Windows (exe, msi), macOS (dmg), and Linux (AppImage, deb).

The Windows version is also available as a Chocolatey package.

The Linux version is also available as a Flatpak at Flathub/steam-rom-manager. Linux caveats:

• On some distributions Flatpak must be pre-configured manually.
• The AppImage needs to be made executable after download.

If you're on a Steam Deck we recommend setting everything up through EmuDeck, as it will install and automatically configure Steam ROM Manager and whatever emulators you want.

Support SteamGridDB

If you enjoy Steam ROM Manager and want it to continue to be useful consider supporting SteamGridDB's Patreon. SteamGridDB hosts all of the artwork Steam ROM Manager uses to make your Steam library the envy of the town, so we should probably help them keep their lights on.

Parsers

Parsers are the heart and soul of SRM. If Steam is the octopus, then these are its tentacles — reaching into your ROM directories and the databases and manifest files of other game stores and pulling out the games you want.

ROM Parsers

Platform Parsers

In addition to flexible importing of ROMS, SRM now has several platform parsers for importing from popular game stores:

✅ Implemented ❌ Planned 🟦 Store not present

We are open to suggestions and pull requests if you would like a platform parser added!

Artwork Only Parsers

For developers

Command Line Interface

SRM has a fully featured command line interface, documented in the wiki.

Building SRM

To compile this app, you'll need the latest Node.js and yarn. Every script will need to be run from the project directory.

Before running any scripts, dependencies must be installed using:

yarn install

Unfortunately, because of an issue with better-sqlite3 you will most likely also have to run yarn install after building for windows if you want yarn run start to work. Otherwise, you will likely see the runtime error better-sqlite3 is not a valid win32 application.

Scripts

All script must be run using yarn run command. For example, yarn run watch:renderer.

Debugging an app

Run watch:main (usually once since one rarely changes anything in the main Electron process) and watch:renderer. Each command creates separate webpack instance which will watch referenced files for changes and will recompile app.

App can be run using start script or npx electron . (if you want to test the CLI use npx electron . [command] [flags]). After every recompile by watch:renderer, app can be refreshed using Ctrl + R, however watch:main requires need a restart.

Ctrl + Shift + I can be used to launch Chrome inspector once the app is running. This works even in the release version.

For Windows

Scripts must be run in this order:

yarn run build:dist
yarn run build:win

For MacOS

Scripts must be run in this order:

yarn run build:dist
yarn run build:mac

For linux

Scripts must be run in this order:

yarn run build:dist
yarn run build:linux

For linux flatpak

Unfortunately electron-builder does not yet competently build flatpaks, and the older approach using electron-packager and electron-installer-flatpak can't handle native modules. A work-around is to use electron-builder for the packaging step and electron-installer-flatpak for the actual flatpak creation.

First you need to run yarn install -g @malept/electron-installer-flatpak (this can't be added as dev-dependency since it is not cross-platform and yarn doesn't allow optional dev-dependencies).

Then

yarn run build:dist
yarn run build:linuxdir
yarn run build:flatpak

In order for this to work you must have already installed flatpak-builder using your favorite package manager (e.g. sudo pamac install flatpak-builder) and run:

flatpak install flathub org.freedesktop.Platform//19.08;
flatpak install org.freedesktop.Sdk//19.08;
flatpak install org.electronjs.Electron2.BaseApp/x86_64/stable

Updating dependencies

Use npx ncu to list available dependency updates, and npx ncu -u target [target] to update, where [target] is either patch, minor, latest, greatest, or newest.

Related Projects

Some other projects in the emulation-adjacent space we think you might be interested in!

Front ends

• ES-DE - A top tier emulation front end.
• Playnite - A general purpose front end with lots of importers.
• Firelight - An upcoming front end specifically for emulation with built in achievements.

Configurators

• EmuDeck - A collection of scripts for downloading and managing emulators and front ends alike.
• RetroDeck - Configurator for downloading and managing emulators and front ends alike, focused on the Steam Deck and Linux Desktop.

ROM Managers

• Romm - A rom manager with a web UI.
• Oxyromon - A CLI based rom manager.
• JRomManager - A java based rom manager.

Steam Artwork Tools

• Steam Art Manager - An artwork manager for Steam games.
• SGDBoop - Tool to enable choosing artwork for in Steam directly from steamgriddb's website.

Our Competition

These tools are the closest to SRM in function, that is importing games/ROMs into Steam.

• Steam Rom Mate - An alternative to SRM made with the Steam Deck in mind.
• BoilR - An alternative to SRM focused on importing from other game libraries.
• Ice - The steam importer that started it all, now defunct.