How Vanilla Slops works

A searchable catalog of community-sourced Steam launch options. Here's where the data comes from, what each field means, and where we draw the line. That last part matters.

2,446 games catalogued430 launch optionslast updated Aug 16, 2026

I Where the data comes from

Where the launch options come from

Every option is gathered by a crawler we call slop-scraper, which reads from the places players already trust, in this order:

Curated & engine-specific lists. Hand-picked options for known engines, plus a small set we curate ourselves.
PCGamingWiki. The community wiki's per-game pages.
Steam Community guides. Written by players who have already been there.
ProtonDB. Linux and Steam Deck reports and tweaks.

A few options carry the source Universal rather than a site name — flags that work across many games whatever the engine (-high, -fullscreen, -console), collected by hand rather than lifted from any one game's page.

Find the same command on a dozen games and we store it once and share it, so -windowed never fills the catalog with copies. Updates run on demand rather than on a schedule — the scraper runs when there's time to run it, and new options arrive in batches. That's why every option wears an Added date instead of pretending to be a live feed.

How options are categorized and risk-rated

Categories and risk levels come from a fixed rule set that reads the command itself and where it came from, so the same input always produces the same grade. Display, performance, audio and skip-intro flags we recognize earn a Safe grade. Network and debug flags, which can reach multiplayer integrity and anti-cheat, sit at Experimental by default, since their effects are harder to pin down.

II What you're looking at

Field glossary

Safe: Well-understood, low-impact tweaks (display, performance, audio, skip-intro).
Caution: Works, but can change behavior in ways worth understanding first.
Experimental: Unproven, niche, or able to touch multiplayer and anti-cheat, so try it carefully.
Category: What an option does: Display, Performance, Audio, Network, Proton-Deck, Skip-Intro, or Debug-Dev. Some obscure flags stay Uncategorized.
Engine: The game's engine, shown on its page when we know it: the exact version where we have it (id Tech 3), otherwise the family (id Tech). When the engine is unknown we leave it off rather than guess.
Source: Where the option was found. When a stable link exists (say, ProtonDB), the source is clickable; otherwise it's shown as plain text.
Added: When the option entered the database.
Last checked: When it was last re-confirmed against its source (shown only when available).

How to apply a launch option on Steam

Open Steam and go to your Library.
Right-click the game and choose Properties.
On the General tab, find the Launch Options field.
Type or paste the option (e.g. -windowed) into the field. To use several at once, separate them with spaces (e.g. -windowed -novid).
Close Properties. Steam saves automatically, and the option applies next time you launch the game.

To remove one, reopen the same field and delete the text. Options are game-specific; an option that helps one game may do nothing (or misbehave) in another.

Worth knowing: a launch option can break a game's rendering, reset local settings, or trip anti-cheat in multiplayer. Read the description first, add one at a time, and treat anything rated above Safe as a deliberate experiment.

III What we claim, and what we don't

What "verified" means here (and what it doesn't)

We would rather under-promise than oversell, so here's the straight version:

What we do

A save-gate turns away malformed or junk entries at the door, so what you see are real, well-formed commands from the sources above.
What we're building

A Last checked date that appears once an option has been re-confirmed against its source. Coverage grows over time. No date yet means it hasn't come up for review, not that it's broken.
What we don't claim

Options are sourced, not personally tested on every game. Community voting isn't live, so we don't dangle vote counts as a trust signal. Read an option's description before you paste it in.

When a field is blank on purpose

Now and then you'll open an option and find no description, just a source link. When the only text a source offered was wrong, circular ("use the -nomovie flag"), or a pasted list of other flags, we store nothing and show the link instead. The same goes for a game that lists no options at all: most games simply don't have any documented. A blank field is a decision, not a missing one.

Know one we're missing?

This catalog grows with the community. If you know a launch option that isn't here, suggest it on GitHub and we'll review it against the sources above.

Where it came from, and what it stands for

Launch options are scattered across wikis, Steam guides and decade-old forum threads, and finding the right flag for one game costs you a handful of tabs and a guess about whether any of it is still true. We went looking for a single searchable place that listed them and cited its sources, couldn't find one, and built it.

What that means in practice is a short list of commitments. The catalog is free and needs no account. There are no ads and no analytics, the site sets no cookies, and the only thing it remembers is whether you picked the light or dark theme, which stays in your own browser. The crawler that gathers the data is published for anyone to read, every option names where it came from, and when we don't know something we leave it blank rather than fill it in with something that sounds right.

This is a small project, maintained by hand. The goal isn't to be the biggest catalog; it's to be the fastest way to an option you can trust.

The rest is up to you.