Frequently Asked Questions

Can Steamworks.NET be used within the Unity Editor?

Yes absolutely!

The only downside is the Steam Overlay does not function well or even often at all within the editor due to the number of unique windows, so keep that in mind when testing out aspects of Steamworks that require the Overlay to be available such as the Steam Controller or Microtransactions.

How do I upload my game to Steam?

You still need the official Steamworks SDK to get the ContentBuilder tool to upload your game.

Steam says I’m in game constantly after playing in the editor

Steam will only recognize a game as having shutdown when the last dependent process has quit. This is normal and does not affect the usage of Steamworks.NET.

See this Github issue for common causes and fixes.

The Steam Overlay doesn’t work

For the Steam Overlay to work it must be injected before the renderer (DirectX/OpenGL) gets initialized. This is not feasible from Unity as Scripts only start running after the renderer is set up and injection is done through the SteamAPI.Init() API call.

It should work fine when launched through Steam as Steam will always inject the overlay into all processes as it starts.

It is highly recommended that you set your AppId in SteamAPI.RestartAppIfNecessary() which can be found in SteamManager. It will relaunch your application if it is launched from the exe directly, giving you the overlay all the time.

The Steam Overlay causes rendering errors

There are many cases where the overlay does not play nice with Unity, unfortunately this happens regardless of using Steamworks.NET and we are unable to resolve Steam Overlay issues as it is out of our control.

If you are running into overlay issues please check out this Steamworks Discussions post.

What languages does Steamworks.NET support?

In theory it should work with any .NET based language! Documentation is only provided for C#, but many people have used it from UnityScript as well. Let me know if you’re using it from Boo or F#!

My Unity build doesn’t launch

Please check the logs to see if it’s Steamworks related, it could be that you’re missing the steam_appid.txt in your output folder, or aren’t running the game through steam, SteamAPI.RestartAppIfNecessary() might not be set. Steamworks.NET does not copy the steam_appid.txt over automatically because it is not something that you should be shipping to customers.

If your build is shutting down due to SteamAPI.Init() failing as the SteamManager script does by default, double check that you own the game on your currently logged in account, otherwise follow Valve’s documentation to troubleshoot such issues.

Steam only shows me playing ‘SpaceWar’ how do I change it to my game?

When you launch your game from outside of Steam it relies on steam_appid.txt to be present to let steam know what is being launched. To change from SpaceWar to your own game you must edit the steam_appid.txt which is found in the root of your Unity project, or next to your built .exe/.app. Replace ‘480’ with your Valve provided AppId.

Does the Steam DRM wrapper work with Unity or XNA/Monogame?

No it doesn’t. Unfortunately the Steam DRM wrapper does not play well with .NET applications such as Unity and your application will likely fail to start if it’s wrapped. Even if it does succeed and work for you it will often fail on other computers.

This is most likely either caused by not calling SteamAPI.RunCallbacks() at regular intervals in your game or not calling SteamUserStats.StoreStats() after you set an achievement.

Can I disable compilation of Steamworks.NET on specific platforms?

Yes! Just define DISABLESTEAMWORKS. This can be done with Unity in the Player Settings. For more information see Unity’s Documentation Note that you will have to wrap all your code that calls Steamworks functions in #if statements as well.

What versions of Unity are supported?

Steamworks.NET currently targets the oldest LTS release supported by Unity. Currently Unity 2019.4 is the “legacy LTS”, and the oldest that Steamworks.NET officially supports.

If you’re running an older version of Unity you can try out an older release of Steamworks.NET such as version 15.0.1 which was the last release to officially support Unity 2019.3 and older.

What operating systems does Steamworks.NET support?

Steamworks.NET supports the combination of all of the platforms that Unity and Steam both support. On Windows this is Windows XP and newer. On macOS it’s macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) and newer.

Should I use the dlls from the Steamworks SDK?

No! Steamworks.NET bundles the appropriate DLL’s along side releases. Mismatching Steamworks.NET with DLL’s from a different SDK WILL lead to crashing.