"Failed to find Steam" when starting

Question

I have bought Deus Ex: Game of the Year edition on Steam and I am experiencing an issue that prevents me from playing. When I start the game I immediately get the following error;

The game then immediately quits. Any ideas?

Answer 1

If you have 64-bit Windows or have chosen a custom installation location for Steam, the game will "fail to find Steam" because it's only looking in the default locations.

The solution below is from the official Steam forums.

Users of 64-bit Windows will have Steam located here by default:

C:\Program Files (x86)\steam

The solution is to add your Steam location to your path.

Here's how you modify the 'Path' environmental variable;

• Right-click on "Computer" (in XP it was called "My Computer") and click on Properties.

• in Vista / 7, on the left click on "Advanced System Settings". On XP, skip to the next step as you're already on the right screen.

• In the Advanced tab, you'll see a button for "Environment Variables". Click it.

• In the lower section of that new window, you should see something like "System Variables". Scroll through to find the one called "PATH". You could probably create a user variable for this instead if you wanted

• Highlight the entry for "PATH" and click "Edit...".

• You'll get a too-small text box that has a field on the top for "Variable Name" and a field under it for "Variable Value". Put your cursor into the "Variable Value" field and hit the [End] key so you know you're not inserting text in the middle of another entry. If you push the right arrow key it should not scroll.

• Add a semicolon [;] to separate your new entry from the others.

• Paste in the path to Steam, which for me is D:\Steam but if you've installed to the default location on a Windows 7 64 system will be:

  C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam
  

• Press OK, and re-launch Steam so that it gets the new environment variables. (It might work without re-launching, but hey why not.)

• Run the game!

This should work with any custom location of Steam, for any games that have trouble finding Steam when they launch.