I hope my question makes sense as-is – if not let me elaborate a bit.
When I click "add non-steam game", I get a big list of potential games it wants to suggest. It looks like it is doing a recursive search for EXEs 1 folder deep. I guess this because it seems to find most of my games but not the ones that have their executable in a subdirectory like "games\binaries".
Is there a way to tell Steam to search deeper, possibly via a setting I'm missing or the registry? I have a lot of older games that I want to add.
edit: my directory theory was wrong. Some games that don't appear in the list have their EXE in the first folder (e.g. c:\games\Fallout3).
Best Answer
When you click the button: Add non-Steam game, Steam searches the Registry for Entries. then all registered Programs that are not yet added to steam are shown in that window.
Steam does not support non-registered (not properly installed) Games unlike to other game-overlays (xFire, Gameranger). in these overlays you have to add the path to a game manually if it is not installed with registry-entry.
Your request is simply not possible with Steam.