How To Add a Web Browser Game to Your Steam Library

Posted 09/07/2011 at 10:29am | by Seamus Bellamy

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If you’ve invested heavily in Steam’s growing portfolio of games, you’ll know that aside from offering a large enough selection of PC games to make GameStop blush in shame, the service also has a slick Graphic User Interface that makes keeping track of your downloaded titles a breeze. With very little effort, you can leverage Steam’s awesome library interface to keep track of and open all of your favorite web browser-bound games in exactly the same way.

From the get-go, the Steam client is designed to allow users to add executable files to their game list, but isn’t too keen on command line switches. That means that if you want to, you could add Google’s Chrome browser to your Steam library, but not a particular website or Chrome web application like Angry Birds. In order to do that, you’ll need to build your own executable file. Doing so is a lot easier than you might think.

Step One: Whip up a Batch.

Open Notepad. From the file menu, select Save As, and pick a name for the batch file you’re about to create. We suggest using the title of the browser game you want to add to Steam as the name of the file. Add .bat to the end of your file name. From the Save as type drop down menu, pick All Files. Select your rig’s Desktop as the save location. Click Save.
Now that you’ve saved your file, enter the following into Notepad:

If you’re not an Angry Birds fan, locate another browser game and use its URL instead. The same goes for Chrome - this trick will work with whichever web browser you prefer. Now, hit that save button again. Congratulations: You’ve just created a batch file. Locate the file on your desktop and double click it. Did your browser game open up? Perfect. Let’s move on.

Step Two: Execute.

It’s time to make that new batch file of yours into an executable that Steam can recognize. For this exercise, we used F2KO’s free Bat to Exe Converter. Download the program and fire it up. Select your batch file by clicking the button next to the batch file filed at the top of the program’s interface window. Click Compile. You’ll find that an executable version of the file has been created and saved to your desktop.

Step Three : Add to Steam

Open up that Steam client, or if you’ve rigged it to start up when you crank on Windows, maximize it and navigate to the client’s Library view and resist the temptation to start a frag-fest with Team Fortress 2 (if you need help with this, don’t be afraid to ask—We’re not here to judge).

Look to the bottom left corner of the Library interface. See that link marked “ADD A GAME”? You’re gonna want to click that. By doing so, you’ll be rewarded with a brief menu that offers you three choices, but we’re only interested in one them: Add a Non-Steam Game. Choosing this will open a list of all the executable files on your computer. Locate your newly created executable file in the list of programs provided by Steam, or find it using the window’s Browse button. Now, click Add Selected Program.

Step Four: Get Your Game On

While it might not look as pretty as the rest of your collection, an icon for your web browser game can now be found in your Steam Library. Give it a click: Your web browser will be launched and your game will be loaded. Easy like pancakes.