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What your friends see:
Steam will display whatever name you’ve given that shortcut in your library. So if you rename the shortcut to “SuperCoolApp,” your friends will see
> [You] is playing SuperCoolApp
…rather than the generic “is playing a non-Steam game.”
What you lose by doing this:
1. No Achievements or Trading Cards. None of the Steam-integrated unlockables or collectible cards will register.
2. No Steam Cloud Sync. Your save files won’t automatically back up to Steam’s servers.
3. No Workshop or DLC Management. You can’t subscribe to Workshop mods or buy DLC through Steam.
4. Limited Overlay Support. The Steam Overlay (Shift+Tab) can be hit-or-miss in some non-Steam executables—sometimes it won’t inject at all.
5. No Remote Play Together / In-Home Streaming. Steam’s streaming and “Invite Friends to Play” features only work with Steam-native titles.
6. No Automatic Updates. You’ll have to update the game manually outside of Steam.
What you keep (and even gain):
Playtime Tracking. Steam will still log how long you spend in that shortcut.
Friends Notifications & Big Picture Integration. Launching via Steam still fires off the usual “is playing…” status and lets you use Big Picture mode or a controller config.
Bottom line: If your goal is just to centralize all your launchers under one roof and let friends see what you’re up to, adding non-Steam games works great—and it’ll show the custom name you give it, not a generic label. The trade-offs are purely the Steam-services you’ll be missing out on, but apart from a few overlay/streaming quirks, there are no serious downsides.
Anyone with first hand experience wanna chime in to confirm any of this or answer with their brain?
It will say that you're playing the game.
You can even add mspaint.exe and name it "Team Fortress 3", and it will say that you're playing Team Fortress 3, with "non Steam game" below it.
Sorry AI, not true. While it shows your playtime for non Steam games as long as you in the game, it wont save them after you end the playsession.
So if you tab to the client while ingame it shows the current playtime since you started the game below it.
But if you exit the game it goes down to zero again, it does not track cumulative playtime for non Steam games so its pretty much worthless.
The fact that it tracks your playtime is indeed incorrect.