Minecraft – Adding Minecraft to Steam’s games library with multiple JREs

Adding Minecraft (Java 64bit) to Steam

1. Open the command line prompt as an Administrator. Usually, you can find the command prompt in the Accessoires start menu; right-click on it and chose "Run as administrator", accepting any UAC prompt which pops up.

2. On the command line prompt, make a local symbolic link to the javaw.exe executable by typing in the following:

   mklink %AppData%\minecraftjava.exe %ProgramFiles%\Java\jre7\bin\javaw.exe

   Replace jre7 with jre6 if you still have Java 6 installed instead; replace the whole Java path if you installed it into a different location.

3. Try out the new executable with the following command:

   %AppData%\minecraftjava.exe -jar %AppData%\.minecraft\minecraft.exe

4. Open Steam and in the bottom left, click "Add a Game", then "Add a Non-Steam Game"

5. Click on "Browse" at the bottom
6. Navigate to wherever "%AppData%" is on your computer (it's usually in C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming) and choose "minecraftjava.exe"
   
   You can verify the location of the %AppData% folder by opening up a Windows Explorer (Windows+E or right-click on the Start button and chose "Explore") and typing it in the location bar at the top of the window.
7. Click "Add Selected Programs"
8. Right click on the entry made in your Steam Library and click "Properties"

9. Set the target as this (on one line, including quotes)

   "C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\minecraftjava.exe" -jar "C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\minecraft.exe"

   Again replace "Username" with your Windows user name.

10. Click "Close" to save that change.

To set the icon:

10. Right click it again and click "Properties"
11. Click "Choose Icon"
12. Find your Minecraft.exe file ("C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\Minecraft.exe")
13. Click "Close"
14. You may have to set the target to what it was set to above again. (After clicking "Close") because for some reason Steam will forget parameters after changing another setting.

Minecraft should now be able to run via Steam, with support for showing your "In Non-Steam Game" status and with the Steam Overlay.

If for whatever reason it does not work, go back into properties and change to target to what it was set to above. When using parameters Steam sometimes forgets this under other circumstances.

I found that the "servers are too busy" message was thrown basically any time an error prevented the game (Borderlands 2 in my case) from launching. It was certainly not in any way related to the Steam servers, and pretty unfortunate that it so misleadingly masks some specific problem with the system.

After much trial and error, based on clues on the Wine AppDB reports and such, I was able to get it running by installing various dependencies and stuff. Unfortunately, I failed to properly document my adventure, but here are a few things I did that you might want to try:

• With winetricks or directly with wine, install: vcredist vcrun2008 vcrun2010 msxml3 winhttp physx
• With your native package manager, install: lib32-mpg123 gpgme libassuan
• Make sure DirectX is installed in the wine environment
• Launch the game by running wine Borderlands2.exe from command line (no symlinks!)

For better performance, I also ended up creating a swapfile, and tweaking the wine registry to recognize all 2GB of my video card's RAM -- it defaulted to only addressing up to 128MB or something crazy like that.

Hope this helps! Good luck.