How to Play Blizzard Games on the Steam Link

Learn how to make Steam and Blizzard games get along.

Intro

It might seem easy to setup Blizzard games in Steam by adding them as non-Steam games, but often the Blizzard App opens up and Steam doesn't recognize it or the Steam overlay crashes when the game launches. So after doing some research, here's how you can get your Blizzard games to work friendly with Steam Big Picture Overlay, Steam In-Home Streaming, and the Steam Link. You'll need to do this guide on your host computer. That's the computer you select to stream from on your Steam Link.

Please note these instructions assumes Steam running on a Windows OS.
I cannot test if this guide can work on Mac, Linux, or Steam OS.

Configure Blizzard App

There's a couple settings that need to be changed so the Blizzard App behaves as how Steam expects launchers to work.

1. Open the Blizzard App.
   
2. Click the Blizzard icon at the top-left of the window.
   
3. Click Settings.
   
4. In the General tab, uncheck Launch Blizzard App when you start your computer.
   
5. Change the "When I launch a game" setting to Exit Blizzard App completely.
   
6. Uncheck Show a brief countdown instead of closing immediately.
   
7. Click Done.
   
8. Quit the Blizzard App.

Add Blizzard App to Steam

This isn't as straight-forward as it seems, so please read the directions carefully.

1. From the main Steam window, click Games at the top-left of the window.
   
2. Click Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library...
   
3. Click the Browse... button at the bottom of the window.
   
4. Navigate to where your Blizzard App is installed.
   
   • On 32-bit OSes, the default location is C:\Program Files\Blizzard App
     
   • On 64-bit OSes, the default location is C:\Program Files (x86)\Blizzard App
5. Click the Battle.net application. Do NOT select Battle.net Launcher.
   
6. Click OK.
   
7. Click Add Selected Programs.

Edit Blizzard App Properties in Steam

1. Copy the text corresponding to your game from the Copy Text column of the table below.
   
2. Find Battle.net in your Steam library.
   
3. Right-click Battle.net.
   
4. Click Properties.
   
5. Change title from Battle.net to your game's title.
   
6. In the Target field, insert a space after the last quotation mark and paste the text from Step 1.
   
   • Example: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Blizzard App/Battle.net.exe" battlenet://S2
7. Click Close.

Game	Copy Text
Diablo III	battlenet://D3
Hearthstone	battlenet://WTCG
Heroes of the Storm	battlenet://Hero
Overwatch	battlenet://Pro
StarCraft II	battlenet://S2
StarCraft Remastered	battlenet://SCR
World of Warcraft	battlenet://WoW
Destiny 2 ( Warning [www.bungie.net] )	battlenet://DST2

Play the Game Through Steam

If you followed these instructions correctly, you now can play Blizzard games with the Steam overlay working properly. Test on your computer first. Launch the game from the Steam library and the Blizzard App should launch. Click the Play button. Your game should get a pop-up indicating the Steam overlay works. If it does not, restart these directions and read carefully.

Steam can handle an update to your game, though you might get latency and stuttering during the download. If there's an update to the Blizzard App, I recommend exiting the app and updating it manually via your host computer.

Source for guide information: https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/3tfrv5/guide_how_to_use_steam_overlay_with_the_blizzard/

Changelog

2017-10-26 - Added Destiny 2 with a warning.
2017-08-15 - Added StarCraft Remastered but can't verify if it works for full game (I don't own it).
2017-06-30 - Clarified game launch behavior. Changed game/app update recommendations.
2017-04-05 - Renamed Battle.net Desktop App to Blizzard App.
2016-07-24 - Initial version.

[Doughsay]

Thanks for the guide, works great!

Note for those streaming to a MacBook Pro with an integrated AMD card: I had to *disable* hardware encoding on the host machine (Nvidia in my case), otherwise the client would flicker constantly. Even without hardware encoding, I still get ~59 fps, but a 30ms display latency, (approximately 2 frames behind).

[Wuterbear]

Please disregard my inquiry. Upon further inspection I discovered a failed attempted to add Overwatch on Steam still remained in my library from the past. Once I removed the culprit and opened the game via the instruction guide here it opened right up. Just as stated by the author, you will need to move the mouse onto the play button. It still works! Excellent guide! Thank you very much!

[Wuterbear]

Overwatch throws it's login window up but will not let you proceed. What am I missing?

[Bob The Builder]

@Gosig 2 The author said/says you need to click the play button manually now but before you didn't again that's just what he said

[KADO]

I can confirm this method works too but everytime you launch the game you have to press on the play button which is kinda IMO uncomfortable.

I've tried with this program and it works like charm, means auto-login and auto-press on the play button. Link and tutorial http://madalien.com/stuff/bnetlauncher/

btw, it has to open up Blizzard app for the start otherwise it wont work

[Lil Gosig]

I did this for Hearthstone but the Blizzard app popped up anyway. Is there any way to stop this?

[tokyo]

So hard

[Cheg]

Does not work in starcraft remastered. It opens but it doesn't have the steam overlay.

[RobotUnicorn]

Works great for overwatch

[Chilli]

So, what about Destiny 2? Still bannable atm?