Steam Client changes the shortcut URL?

[CZBGR Icepick]

Ok, so the premise here is that I have Batman™ Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition....on Epic. Not Steam.

My standard fare is to add it as a non-Steam game, and because I wanted to play the game directly, not the launcher, I correctly addressed the proper .exe file. In addition, I use Steam to also paste a shortcut on my desktop. The whole point of doing this is so that I use my controller for the game through Steam, which otherwise would use the Desktop layout default.

But here is where it gets weird.

Even if I created a shortcut from Steam, it still launches the Epic client. The only thing that triggers this problem is when I use this exact label on the shortcut, "Batman™ Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition", which is also used with the Epic client's generated shortcut. What happens is, the URL would normally be using Steam's link when you normally add the shortcut, but instead, what launches the Epic client is that the URL is automatically changed to use the Epic version of the shortcut. Theoretically, I could either try to force the link itself to be set to "read-only", or a simpler solution I'm using now - rename the shortcut to something like "Batman™ Arkham Asylum GOTY Edition", which I really didn't want to be doing in the first place.

I foresee this a major problem, not just because it doesn't do what one wants or behaves the way it normally works, but it forces people to use a platform they don't need to be running when launching a game. This also disables the controller function used for the game, which reverts back to the desktop layout.

Big note in case you tried thinking of this: It's not relevant if the Epic client is running or not when adding the shortcut, and this even happens when it's especially not running. I'm writing in the observation that it appears the Steam client has some sort of strange protocol with the naming scheme, and I wouldn't know what games are affected. It also doesn't matter what .exe I use, because that's just gonna launch the Epic client and the subsequent launcher anyway.

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EDIT: For some reason, I cannot replicate the problem, although I have seen it happened on my first few runs before a restart. Now I can only get a new shortcut URL if I change the name on the client, but sometimes this is mismatched* and doesn't launch unless I change it back.

*By "mismatch", I mean, I was only concerned with the "Web Document" tab portion of the properties window which I monitor for the URLs. The "Details" tab shows what was the original link before it, which is also weird, and I cannot manually change that from the desktop anyway.

[wuddih]

the games exe launches the epic client, because that is how DRM works.

[CZBGR Icepick]

Originally posted by wuddih:

the games exe launches the epic client, because that is how DRM works.

Did you not read the whole post?

First of all, It's a DRM-free game.

Second, I'm launching a non-Steam shortcut, that has nothing to do with Epic.

I can literally launch the game without the Epic client to do what I want.

The whole issue is the fact if I even as so much name the shortcut on the client and subsequently the icon on my desktop the exact way they use it, the whole URL automatically changes, even though there is no directive associated with Epic in the properties menu on the Steam client. I could likely add another non-Steam shortcut with a fake file using the exact same name, and that would come up with the same result. Nothing to do with Epic or any DRM.