I am playing Skyrim modded, and would like to have the Steam overlay in the game, so that I can chat with users and such.

I have purchased the game and activated it in Steam, but since I am launching through SKSE.exe, I cannot launch it through Steam. Or, is there a way to do this?

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3 Answers

On the bottom left of steam there is a button that says 'Add a game' simply click that, select 'none Steam game' and find the 'SKSE.exe' which should be in your root Skyrim directory. Name it whatever you'd like, doesn't matter. When you launch it via Steam it will start Skyrim using SKSE. However all the steam stats will be added to the official Skyrim game in Steam. So everything works as it should!

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If you rename the skse_loader.exe to SkyrimLauncher.exe, Steam will pick it up and think it is the actual executable of the game.

This is beneficial over simply using the "Add a non-steam game" method, as achievements and other community features (such as screenshots being tied to the correct game) will work as well.

I made a write up of how to set this up for Fallout 3/New Vegas, but the same steps work for Skyrim as well. To summarise:

• Change the SkyrimLauncher.exe file to be a different name, such as SkyrimLauncher-orig.exe (in case you want/need to revert).
• Create a copy of the skse_loader.exe file, and rename it to SkyrimLauncher.exe
• Click Play in Steam. It should launch the game with SKSE.

Even if you go through the SKSE, or any other external loader (Wrye Bash, for example), Skyrim should load through Steam and activate the overlay.

This is the case for any Steam game: Steam is linked to the game executable, and you can't launch the executable, even if you don't go through the Steam interface, without Steam checking the game and starting the overlay if activated.

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