[Starz0r]

You are in luck, Valve has SteamCMD[1] for users just like yourself! It is a command line version of the Steam client and can do most of what you need like downloading, updating, even verifying game integrity from the command line! I only wish it was open source, maybe someone can reverse engineer it?

[1] https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD

[xPaw]

Steam protocol has been well understood for a while now: https://github.com/steamre/steamkit

Which is based on reverse engineering the Steam client, so you can implement game downloading yourself.

[Fnoord]

It appears to be only for downloading/updating game servers; not for downloading/updating games.

[Laaas]

but how do you run a game from that?

[h1d]

If it's possible someone can come up with a small UI that only lists and launches games.

[Fnoord]

Playnite [1]. Open source, lightning fast, and light on resources. You can even combine different platforms such as Steam + Battle.net. Saves you running each of these. Though you lose things like downloads and social. Heck, it even has support for emulators.

[1] https://playnite.link

[Rumudiez]

From the article: https://github.com/DioJoestar/SteamCMD-GUI/blob/master/READM...

They don’t seem to have a *nix referral, but seems totally possible to make.