How to get the Steam overlay for non-Steam games!

A place to talk about games in general
Post Reply
User avatar
[JiF]Cesar
Forum User
Posts: 608
Joined: Sun Jan 04, 2009 6:53 pm
Location: Oslo, Norway

How to get the Steam overlay for non-Steam games!

Post by [JiF]Cesar »

I recently (today) found out how to get the Steam overlay for non-Steam games. I had no idea that it was possible, so I'll post it here if others want to do the same.


1. Open Steam

2. Click on Games < Add a Non-Steam game to My Library

3. Wait for the list to complete

4. Check if your game is listed there, if not, you have to Browse to the game.

5. After you've browsed to the game, it should be added & selected to the game list, and you only need to click "Add selected Programs".

6. Now, for it to work, you need to launch it through Steam. Meaning that if you try to launch the game with an old desktop shortcut, it won't work. So, you need to go to "My Library" on Steam. Find the game, and right-click it < Create Desktop Shortcut.

7. Now, you should have a shortcut on your desktop, but without an icon. It doesn't matter, but it's ugly ;3    To fix that, right-click the shortcut, then "Properties". Go to the "Web Document" tab, and click on "Change Icon". Browse to the same path you did when adding the game to Steam, and it will get the same icon as that file. Click "OK", and you're done! :D


I've only tested this with Dragon Age II, and the overlay works there. But Steam says "Some detailed information on [GAME NAME] is unavailable because it's a non-Steam mod or shortcut. Steam will still manage launching the game for you and in most cases the in-game overlay will be available."
Last edited by [JiF]Cesar on Tue Apr 12, 2011 2:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
                                                          ♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫
User avatar
[JiF]Mike
Site Admin
Posts: 2017
Joined: Thu Aug 24, 2006 12:45 pm
Location: NH
Contact:

Re: How to get the Steam overlay for non-Steam games!

Post by [JiF]Mike »

Cool. I've added games to Steam before but had no idea the overlay would work! lol Nice find.
ImageImage
Post Reply