Steam Deploy

GitHub Action to deploy game builds to Steam via steamcmd. Runs directly on the runner. Works on ubuntu-latest, self-hosted Linux, Kubernetes runner pods, and ARM machines.

Usage

- uses: remmik/steam-deploy@v0
  with:
    appId: '4663600'
    buildDescription: 'v1.0.0'
    rootPath: steampipe-content
    depots: |
      4663601 windows
      4663602 macos
      4663603 linux
    releaseBranch: develop
    username: ${{ secrets.STEAM_USERNAME }}
    configVdf: ${{ secrets.STEAM_CONFIG_VDF }}

Single depot (simplest case)

If you have a single build directory, skip depots entirely. The action uploads rootPath as depot appId + 1:

- uses: remmik/steam-deploy@v0
  with:
    appId: '4663600'
    rootPath: build/output
    releaseBranch: main
    username: ${{ secrets.STEAM_USERNAME }}
    configVdf: ${{ secrets.STEAM_CONFIG_VDF }}

Inputs

Input	Required	Description
appId	Yes	Steam Application ID
buildDescription	No	Description shown in Steamworks
rootPath	Yes	Root path to the build content directory
depots	No	Newline-separated depotId path mappings (path relative to rootPath)
releaseBranch	Yes	Steam branch to set live after upload
username	Yes	Steam username
configVdf	Yes	Base64-encoded config.vdf for authentication

Outputs

Output	Description
buildId	Steam BuildID of the uploaded build

Authentication

This action uses Steam's config.vdf for authentication, the same approach used by most CI/CD Steam deploy setups.

Generating config.vdf

1. Install steamcmd locally
2. Log in with your Steam builder account:

   steamcmd +login <username> <password> +quit
   

3. Complete the SteamGuard prompt
4. Base64-encode the generated config file:

   base64 -w 0 ~/Steam/config/config.vdf
   

5. Store the output as a GitHub secret (STEAM_CONFIG_VDF)

Note: The config.vdf contains your cached login token. It expires periodically. You'll need to regenerate it when deploys start failing with auth errors.

Why not game-ci/steam-deploy?

game-ci/steam-deploy is a Docker-based action. This causes real problems:

• Self-hosted runners: Docker isn't always available (Kubernetes pods, ARM machines, hardened hosts)
• Permission errors: Docker volume mounts cause file permission issues across runs (/usr/bin/tar permission denied, files that can't be cleaned up)
• Pull failures: docker pull can fail with "Pull access denied" errors
• Windows: Docker Linux containers don't run on Windows runners

This action runs steamcmd directly on the runner, avoiding all of these.

Migrating from game-ci/steam-deploy

Replace the numbered depot*Path/depot*Id inputs with the depots input:

# Before (game-ci/steam-deploy)
- uses: game-ci/steam-deploy@v3
  with:
    appId: '4663600'
    rootPath: steampipe-content
    depot1Path: windows
    depot2Path: macos
    depot3Path: linux
    releaseBranch: develop
    username: ${{ secrets.STEAM_USERNAME }}
    configVdf: ${{ secrets.STEAM_CONFIG_VDF }}

# After (remmik/steam-deploy)
- uses: remmik/steam-deploy@v0
  with:
    appId: '4663600'
    rootPath: steampipe-content
    depots: |
      4663601 windows
      4663602 macos
      4663603 linux
    releaseBranch: develop
    username: ${{ secrets.STEAM_USERNAME }}
    configVdf: ${{ secrets.STEAM_CONFIG_VDF }}

The depots format makes the depot-to-directory mapping explicit rather than relying on positional numbering.

License

MIT