Forum: gaming.stackexchange.com
Tags: <steam>
Title: Why is Steam saying my friends are playing Hello Kitty: Island Adventure when I know they aren't?
Question: I frequently see that my friends on Steam are playing  Hello Kitty: Island Adventure . I know that this is not accurate. Why is Steam reporting that they're playing a game that isn't on Steam? Is Steam lying?

Answers:
sents: text: As Gnoupi said, it's possible to report any game you want to play as a non-Steam game.
text: In this case, it's a joke reference to the episode
text: "Make Love, Not Warcraft" of South Park, in which Butters prefers Hello Kitty Island Adventure over World of Warcraft.
text: As far as I know no such game exists.
text: By the way, there's a similar exploit where it is possible to show yourself playing a game which you have pre-loaded, but is not yet released, by using a utility that reports the AppID to Steam.
text: This means you can't even trust the regular in-game titles either.
text: I've been known to "play" Left 4 Dead 2 and Portal 2 prior to its release.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/None/
score: 75
sents: text: You can make Steam say you're playing anything .
text: All you have to do is add a non-Steam game shortcut and rename it.
text: I heard about a fantastic April Fool's prank where someone did this and named the shortcut "Half-Life 2:
text: Episode Three."
text: All of his friends freaked out!
text: Pretty classic.
text: To add a non-Steam game to your games library, select Add Game at the bottom left of Steam and select the corresponding menu item:
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/46/cowgod
score: 37
sents: text: Steam is not lying on such reporting, for games in their library.
text: It is possible to be shown as playing just about anything, since you can add a third party game to your game list, and give it the name you want.
text: It will be written as "In a non-steam game" under, though.
text: Since there is no "hello kitty" game in the Steam store, I assume that this is what is done there.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/69/Gnoupi
score: 8
sents: text: You can hook up games (or really anything) in your Steam UI.
text: In fact, as a joke, I made it so that when I am programming it will say "Melanie Shebel is now playing Vim."
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/6697/Melanie
score: 6
sents: text: As others have said, it is possible to add any game to steam and rename it to whatever you want.
text: It is also possible to fake that you are playing games that aren't yet released by changing the App id in the config files.
text: So, if you see that your friend is playing example brink before it's released, it is faked.
text: This method also counts time towards the game.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/9383/Lauri
score: 3

Summary of the answers:
You can make steam say you're playing anything. You can even change the App id to say you're playing a game that isn't released yet.
You can make Steam say you're playing  anything. All you have to do is add a non-Steam game shortcut and rename it.  It is also possible to fake that you are playing games that aren't yet released by changing the App id in the config files.