You Can Run the Liberty City Mod On Steam Deck (Here’s How to Install It)

Last week, World Travel dropped what might just be the greatest GTA 5 mod of all time. The Liberty City Preservation mod lets you dive back into GTA IV’s Liberty City, now running on an updated engine packed with features like 4,500 NPC scenarios, working traffic, and functioning radio stations. When I first tried the mod on my PC, I couldn’t help but wonder—could I get it running on my Steam Deck (512GB, LCD)? And if so, would it actually be playable? Well, here’s how it went.

Performance

The Steam Deck continues to hold its own in the PC handheld market, even for Rockstar fans. The console handles games like GTA V, GTA IV, and Red Dead Redemption with near-locked 60fps performance on suitable settings. However, community mods, often less optimized, raise the question: does the Steam Deck still have what it takes? I’m happy to report that yes, yes it does.

Running GTA V with the HD texture pack, which adds approximately 30GB of Liberty City brilliance, delivers a steady 40fps. While there are slight dips in the city center, the frame rate never drops below the playable 30fps mark. The HD version keeps the visual fidelity of GTA V intact, while delivering a last-gen console style experience in the palm of your hand. Downloading the non-HD texture pack, gives you a steady 60fps or beyond, but it’s good to note this version looks significantly worse, it’s a trade-off you personally need to make a decision on.

Battery also holds up well, on a full charge it lasts around 2.5 hours, exceeding my expectations for such a demanding mod.

This mod has made GTA V exciting for me again. After more than a decade of causing mayhem in Los Santos, I was admittedly burned out—barely touching the game last year. Now, thanks to this mod, I find myself booting it up every day.

Installation

Here’s a heads-up: I initially attempted to install the mod entirely on my Steam Deck without using an external Windows PC. Spoiler—it didn’t work. SteamOS doesn’t natively support OpenIV, so it has to run through Proton, a Wine-based compatibility layer. This led to a host of frustrating issues, including the installation button disappearing, my trackpad refusing to work (making navigation a nightmare), and GTA V’s directory being so deeply hidden that OpenIV couldn’t automatically locate it.

After three days of trying and failing, I finally gave up on this method and switched to a different approach that actually worked. Here’s a step-by-step guide to get it up and running (note: you do need a Windows PC for this method):

What you need:

• Windows PC
• External SSD or HDD with a USB-C connection (SSD much preferred to speed up process significantly)
• Steam Deck
• A copy of Grand Theft Auto V on Steam (Other storefronts may work as well, but I don’t have any data on this as I own it on Steam)

Step 1: Install GTA V through Steam on your Steam Deck

Step 2: Upon completion, open desktop mode on your Steam Deck and locate the GTA V game folder through this directory: /home/deck/.local/share/Steam//steamapps/common/Grand Theft Auto V

Step 3: Connect your external SSD to your Steam Deck (plug the USB-C connector into the port) and transfer the GTA V installation folder from your Steam Deck to the SSD. Note: Do not uninstall the game through steam when you moved the game folder, upon putting the modded game back on your deck this will cause Steam to replace a bunch of modded files, something which you DO NOT WANT.

Step 4: After the transfer is complete, safely eject the SSD from your Steam Deck and connect it to your Windows PC.

Step 5: On your Windows PC, navigate to the GTA V folder on the external SSD. You can now modify the game files, such as installing the Liberty City Preservation mod here. Note: When OpenIV asks you to create a mod folder, DO IT, otherwise the game WILL break.

If you don’t know how to install the mod on Windows, look at this tutorial:

Step 6: Once you’ve installed the mod, safely eject the SSD from your Windows PC and reconnect it to your Steam Deck.

Step 7: On your Steam Deck, copy the modified GTA V folder from the external SSD back to the same directory on your Steam Deck: /home/deck/.local/share/Steam//steamapps/common/

Step 8: Launch GTA V on your Steam Deck, and you should be able to run the game with the mod successfully installed!

If you don’t have a Windows PC and a Steam Deck only, watch this tutorial on how to install the mod entirely through your Steam Deck (though this did make me run into issues as mentioned in the article previously.):

The Liberty City Preservation Project is available to download for free through the World Travel discord server.

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