the bleeding-edge version of butler (butler head) now accepts a `--dereference` option to the `push` command:
butler push --dereference somedirectory user/game:channel
You can check what it sees ahead of time by using the (hidden) walk command:
butler --json walk --dereference somedirectory
To get the latest bleeding-edge butler, you can run
butler upgrade --head
Let me know how it works for you!