SteamRunner

Despite their valiant efforts, Steam’s competitors still have a long way to go before they are able to match the power-user-oriented tools of Valve’s dominant storefront, given their almost two decades of experience in implementing functions designed to increase the convenience of accessing, modding and managing digital copies of video games in the 21^st century.

While an increasingly higher number of developers seem eager to bring their titles to Steam in an attempt to increase their reach, other companies prefer to either stay independent of distribution platforms, or end up tempted by exclusivity deals from rival storefronts. As a result, those who purchased items not available on the Steam client can miss out on a handful of helpful enhancements, which is where SteamRunner comes into play.

Since some older titles can lack support for the full-screen windowed mode, Steam tries to eliminate the need to minimize the current game for accessing the store or workshop through its built-in overlay that grants access to a dedicated browser and the chat system. Those who want to use their controller’s built-in gyroscope for aiming in first-person shooters can make use of the Steam Input feature, that also lets you rebind buttons and create custom profiles according to your preferences.

Given the fact that not all titles can benefit from the aforementioned features, SteamRunner seeks to fix that by using the client’s ability to add non-Steam games and pointing the shortcut’s target to its executable path, while the item’s store, location and ID are specified within the launch options in multiple custom parameters, thus simplifying the process and ensuring a higher degree of compatibility with Steam’s features.