Dunkelheit

Running OpenMW Through Steam

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The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is one of the finest video games ever made. It is one of my favourites and as such I like to have it installed on all of my computers. I prefer to play the game using the OpenMW source port but would still like to use Steam features like game time tracking, screenshot sharing and the overlay.

To follow this guide, you should have the Steam version of Morrowind and OpenMW already installed on your computer.

Linux

  1. Open your Steam library
  2. Right click on ‘The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind’ in your games list.
  3. Click on ‘Properties…’
  4. Under Launch Options enter the path to OpenMW inside of single quotes followed by -- %command%
    • For example '/usr/bin/openmw' -- %command%

Windows

  1. Open your Steam library
  2. Right click on ‘The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind’ in your games list.
  3. Click on ‘Properties…’
  4. Under Launch Options enter the path to OpenMW inside of double quotes followed by %command%
    • For example "C:\Games\OpenMW\openmw.exe %command%"

You can now launch OpenMW via Steam by clicking Play on your Morrowind entry.

This trick will work for other games too. For example Daggerfall Unity, DOOM and DOOM 2 and your personal favourite source port(s).

Update

As far as I am aware you can’t do this to track game time for Morrowind on a Mac as Steam won’t let you launch the game even if you manage to get it to download the game files via a manifest file or console commands.