# Importing Steam Community API in Unreal Engine

**URL:** <https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/importing-steam-community-api-in-unreal-engine/315493>\
**Category:** Platform & Builds\
**Tags:** steamworks, Steam, unreal-engine, UE4, CPP, question\
**Created:** [April 18, 2015, 3:29am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/importing-steam-community-api-in-unreal-engine/315493 "2015-04-18T03:29:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![MNP\_David](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@MNP\_David](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/MNP_David)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 3:29am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/importing-steam-community-api-in-unreal-engine/315493/1 "2015-04-18T03:29:27Z")

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So I have my Steamworks SDK imported in my Unreal Engine project. It builds, and on run, I get the Steam overlay. Great!

However, I am now trying to get the user’s friends list, which requires the Steam Community API, which is included in two files, `ISteamFriends.h` and `ISteamUtils.h`. I am trying to import those into an Actor class that I created to manage Steam communication, but Visual Studio doesn’t see the files and won’t build.

```
#include "GameFramework/Actor.h"
#include "Http.h"
#include "ISteamFriends.h"
#include "ISteamUtils.h"
#include "SteamEvents.generated.h"
...

```

This produces the errors:

> error C1083: Cannot open include file ‘ISteamFriends.h’: No such file or directory

> error C1083: Cannot open include file ‘ISteamUtils.h’: No such file or directory

Is there a specific directory path that I need to give it so that it can find these files? How can I get Visual Studio to find these files so that I can use the Community API?

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**Author:** ![Shadowriver](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@Shadowriver](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/Shadowriver)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 3:52am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/importing-steam-community-api-in-unreal-engine/315493/2 "2015-04-18T03:52:51Z")

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You don’t need to anything at all because UE4 supports multiple game online services out of the box (including SteamWorks) under common interface called OnlineSubsystem

> **[Online Subsystem](https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.1/en-US/online-subsystem-in-unreal-engine/)**
>
> Overview of the various systems related to the online platform.

[https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/API/Runtime/OnlineSubsystem/IOnlineSubsystem/index.html](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/API/Runtime/OnlineSubsystem/IOnlineSubsystem/index.html)  
[https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/API/Runtime/OnlineSubsystem/index.html](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/API/Runtime/OnlineSubsystem/index.html)

It let you support multiple online services using same code without much of modifications, it also let you use online services in blueprint too without need of C++. Documentation is kind of poor right now but here blueprint achivment example for stream:

> **[\[Tutorial\] Steam Achievements](https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?55560-Tutorial-Steam-Achievements)**
>
> Hi, Just wanted to post this because it might help someone. It is mostly only useful to people who have been greenlit on Steam, but can also be of interest to those who are considering whether to apply to Steam or not. This tutorial shows how easy...

UE4 APIs is design in the way so you don’t need to talk to system or external libraries, UE4 has wrappers for many things which improves portability and UE4 APIs are huge, lot of things that you can miss easily, so try to search first or else you might go harder way for no reason.

But for the future, if you really want to include external library here tutorial how to, UE4 use own build system UBT and don’t listen to VS configurations but build scripts (C# code you got in source directory):

> **[A new, community-hosted Unreal Engine Wiki](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/a-new-community-hosted-unreal-engine-wiki/141494)**
>
> After over a year in maintenance mode, the official Unreal Engine Wiki is now permanently offline. These resources now live on a new community-run Unreal Engine Community Wiki — https://unrealcommunity.wiki/! You will be able to find content from...

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**Author:** ![shadowmint](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@shadowmint](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/shadowmint)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 7:16am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/importing-steam-community-api-in-unreal-engine/315493/3 "2015-04-18T07:16:57Z")

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For what it’s worth, I cried for a week trying to understand that DSFADFADSFing static libraries linking wiki page, and ended up writing [GitHub - shadowmint/ue4-static-plugin: A sample static plugin for the unreal engine that imports a C++ and rust library and links them statically.](https://github.com/shadowmint/ue4-static-plugin/) as a general guide for how to link to any arbitrary external library.

Hope it helps!