About
The Operative: No One Lives Forever is a 2000 spy-themed first-person shooter from Monolith Productions, built on the studio's LithTech engine. Set in a stylized 1960s Cold War world, it casts the player as British super-spy Cate Archer of the secret agency UNITY, blending gunplay with stealth, gadgets, and a tongue-in-cheek James Bond pastiche.
The game was a critical hit, praised for its writing, humor, and strong female lead, and is regarded as a cult classic. It has been commercially unavailable for two decades because its rights are tangled between Monolith, Warner Bros., Fox, and Activision, leaving no party able to legally sell it.
Identity
Launch
- Binary
- nolf.exe
- Options
- %command%
- Needs files
- none beyond the binary
Proton
- Version
- GE-Proton
- Winetricks
- dsound, directmusic, vcrun6, vcrun2019
- ProtonDB
- ProtonDB Pending not enough reports yet
⚙ Setup notes
Overview: 2000 Monolith spy shooter (LithTech engine).
Rights: The textbook orphaned-rights case — rights are so tangled between Monolith/WB/Fox/Activision that NO ONE can legally sell it. It's been unavailable for two decades, so it passes the not-for-sale rule.
Proton: Community reports run NOLF1 on Steam Deck under GE-Proton (e.g. GE-Proton9-4). No Steam page exists, so there is no official ProtonDB rating — tier is community-anecdotal, not measured.
Install: Run the nolf.exe launcher (it spawns lithtech.exe, the engine); install dsound + directmusic (music) + vcrun6 + vcrun2019 via winetricks.
Audio: Set dsound override to Builtin (Wine) to fix glitchy NOLF1 audio.
Display: In the launcher's Display settings pick your native res and a mode ending in x32 (32-bit).
FMVs: Delete the in-game Movies folder before launching — the intro FMVs can crash SteamOS in Game Mode.
Cosmetic: NOLF1 crashes on exit (harmless).
Fix: Apply the community NOLF1 Modernizer (haekb / HeyThereCoffeee, on itch.io) for higher resolutions, HUD scaling, a 60fps cap, fixed mouse input, and modern-OS / multiplayer fixes. (It does not add native gamepad support.)
The one thing to know
Orphaned rights: Genuinely unsellable, not just delisted (never had a Steam page, so steam_appid stays empty).
Controller: Keyboard/mouse game with no clean native modern-gamepad support (DirectInput-era control menu). The modernizer improves mouse input but does not add controller support — use a Steam Input gamepad-to-keyboard/mouse layout on Deck.
Audio: Glitchy audio unless dsound override is set to Builtin.
Cosmetic: Crashes on exit (cosmetic).
FMVs: Delete the Movies folder to avoid a Game Mode crash on the intro FMVs.
Community guides
Write-ups and threads from people who got this (or a similar) game running. deckport links to them — it doesn't reproduce them.
Get the artwork
deckport never hosts game images. Open this game on SteamGridDB, pick
the cover / hero / logo / icon you like, and drop them into the
game folder under .deckport-art/ before you push it to the
Deck. The importer files them under the right names automatically.
Run it on your Deck
Two files: the one-time importer (deckport.py) in your
Deck's home folder, and this game's install helper. Copy the game
into ~/Games and run the helper with Steam closed — it
writes the recipe (binary, launch options, Proton version)
and registers the shortcut with artwork.