DIY Steam Cartridges Bring Physical Game Media Back To PC With SSDs

Amidst the discussion around game preservation for Xbox and PlayStation gamers in the digital era, one Redditor has created a unique game cartridge system for Steam. The game cartridges are each individual SATA 2.5-inch 128GB SSD drives, which is generally enough to handle most modern games and their updates. Of course, the licenses are still digital, so the game preservation angle is somewhat limited, but this cartridge system is interesting for many reasons.

For one, it demonstrates the flexibility of PC gaming. While it's true that consoles and discs or cartridges still have their benefits, the PC's broad support for solutions like NAS (Network-Attached Storage), SD cards, and external storage exceed the capabilities of digital-only consoles.

As for the game preservation angle, while discs and cartridges remain king for game preservation, Steam has thus far shown that delisted games are still downloadable and playable from Steam servers, save for cases where the game is, say, overt malware. The Xbox and PlayStation also allow this, but have drawn controversy over support teams more likely to nuke the entire account, purchases included, if an account is compromised. Steam Support may ban accounts from online play, but has no record of revoking purchases or nuking entire accounts.


But finally, let's talk about that Steam cartridge system, how it works, the potential drawbacks, and how you could do it yourself. Redditor u/Jibril-sama explains in the original thread that the SSDs were acquired on the cheap and that inserting them auto-points Steam to the game's page, with auto-start also being an option. In quotes to Tom's Hardware, he elaborates that the SSDs are 128GB and were attained for roughly $8 USD a piece, thanks to buying in bulk. He also points out that the system is Linux-based, though it should be easy enough to recreate on Windows (though without the auto-navigate/auto-launch functionality.)


But what if you wanted to do something similar yourself, or want a more compact solution for handhelds or laptops? In the same thread,Reddit user u/halcyonforeveragain showcased a set of repurposed SD cards he'd been using for his Steam Deck. Solutions like this have been popular for some time in the Steam Deck community thanks to the system's SD card slot and seamless game transfer support. Like cartridges or discs, external storage can greatly add to the flexibility of any gaming system.

There are some caveats worth noting though, particularly for SD card-based game backups. Some modern games leverage DirectStorage and thus demand a minimum grade of SSD performance in order to play smoothly. Benchmarks of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart indicate that SATA SSDs still (usually) meet these demands, but HDDs and standard SD cards do not.

This is also why certain titles on Nintendo Switch 2, like Star Wars Outlaws, are only available physically as Game Key Cards—only an SSD is fast enough to provide a good experience in some games. This applies on the PC too, with a rare few titles like Alan Wake 2 being notoriously demanding on even NVMe SSDs. 

With those considerations in mind, how much would it cost you to set up a similar system with your own Steam games and new hardware? For a single 128GB SD card and USB4 card reader, expect to spend about $53 USD. For a 128GB SATA SSD and a high-quality docking station for SSDs and HDDs, expect to spend about $51 USD, if you're not buying in bulk or scouring eBay or Marketplace. Custom art, stickers, or labelling is largely DIY, but printing out game art or even ordering game-related stickers could be a cool way to differentiate a collection.