FAQ nl NL
Our basic FAQ covers standard questions and answers that you may have. For a less common matters, please visit our extended FAQ instead.
Before trying to understand what ASF is, you should make sure that you understand what Steam cards are, and how to obtain them, which is nicely described in official FAQ here.
In short, Steam cards are collectible items that you're eligible for when owning particular game, and can be used for crafting badges, selling on Steam market or any other purpose of your choice.
Core points are stated once again here, because people in general don't want to agree with them and like to pretend that those do not exist:
- You need to own the game on your Steam account in order to be eligible for any card drops from it. Family sharing doesn't count.
- You can't farm the game infinitely, every game has fixed number of card drops. Once you drop all of them (around a half of the full set), the game is not a candidate for idling anymore. It doesn't matter whether you've sold, traded, crafted or forgot what happened to those cards you've obtained, once you run out of card drops, the game is finished.
- You can't drop cards from F2P games without spending any money in them. This means permanently F2P games like Team Fortress 2 or Dota 2. Owning F2P games does not grant you card drops.
- You can't drop cards on limited accounts, regardless of owned games. It was possible in the past, but it's no longer the case.
- Paid games that you've obtained for free during a promotion can't be idled for card drops, regardless of what is displayed on the store page. It was possible in the past, but it's no longer the case.
So as you can see, Steam cards are awarded to you for playing a game that you bought, or F2P game that you've put money into. If you play such game long enough, all cards for that game will eventually drop to your inventory, making it possible for you to complete a badge (after obtaining the remaining half of the set), sell them, or do whatever else you want.
Now that we've explained the basics of Steam, we can explain ASF. The program itself is quite complex to understand fully, so instead of digging into all the technical details, we'll offer a very simplified explanation below.
ASF logs into your Steam account through our built-in, custom Steam client implementation using your provided credentials. After successfully logging in, it parses your badges in order to find games that are available for idling (X card drops remaining). After parsing all pages and constructing final list of games that are available, ASF chooses most efficient farming algorithm and starts the process. The process depends upon chosen cards farming algorithm but usually it consists of playing eligible game and periodically (plus on each item drop) checking if game is fully idled already - if yes, ASF can proceed with the next title, using the same procedure, until all games are fully farmed.
Keep in mind that explanation above is simplified and doesn't describe dozen of extra features and functions that ASF offers. Visit the rest of our wiki if you want to know every ASF detail. I tried to make it simple enough to understand for everybody, without bringing in technical details - advanced users are encouraged to dig deeper.
Now as a program - ASF offers some magic. Firsty, it doesn't have to download any of your game files, it can play games right away. Secondly, it's entirely independent of your normal Steam client - you don't need to have Steam client running or even installed at all. Thirdly, it's automated solution - which means that ASF automatically does everything behind your back, without a need of telling it what to do - which saves you hassle and time. Lastly, it doesn't have to trick Steam network by process emulation (which e.g. Idle Master is using), as it can communicate with it directly. It's also super fast and lightweight, being an amazing solution for everybody who wants to get cards easily without much hassle - it comes especially useful by leaving it running in the background while doing something else, or even playing in offline mode.
All of the above is nice, but ASF also has some technical limitations that are enforced by Steam - we can't idle games that you don't own, we can't idle games forever in order to get extra drops past the enforced limit, and we can't idle games while you're playing. All of that should be "logical", considering the way how ASF works, but it's nice to note that ASF doesn't have super-powers and won't do something that is physically impossible, so keep that in mind - it's basically the same as if you told someone to log in on your account from another PC and idle those games for you.
So to sum up - ASF is a program that helps you drop those cards you're eligible for, without much hassle. It also offers several other functions, but let's stick to this one for now.
Yes. ASF requires your account credentials in the same way as official Steam client does, as it's using the same method for Steam network interaction. This however doesn't mean that you have to put your account credentials in ASF configs, you can keep using ASF with null/empty SteamLogin and/or SteamPassword, and input that data on each ASF run, when required (as well as several other login credentials, refer to configuration). This way your details are not saved anywhere, but of course ASF can't autostart without your help. ASF also offers several other ways of increasing your security, so feel free to read that part of the wiki if you're advanced user. If you're not, and you don't want to put your account credentials in ASF configs, then simply don't do that, and instead input them as-needed when ASF asks for them.
Keep in mind that ASF tool is for your personal use and your credentials are never leaving your computer. You're also not sharing them with anybody, which fulfills Steam ToS - a very important thing that many people forget about. You're not sending your details to our servers or some third-party, only directly to Steam servers operated by Valve. We don't know your credentials and we're also unable to recover them for you, regardless if you put them in your configs or not.
As long as it takes - seriously. Every game has different farming difficulty set by developer/publisher, and it's totally up to them how fast cards are being dropped. Majority of the games follow 1 drop per 30 minutes of playing, but there are also games requiring from you to play even several hours before dropping a card. In addition to that, your account could be restricted from receiving card drops from games you didn't play for enough time yet, as stated in performance section. Do not attempt to make guesses how long ASF should farm given title - it's not up to you, neither ASF to decide. There is nothing you can do to make it faster, and there is no "bug" related to cards not being dropped in timely fashion - you do not control cards dropping process, neither does ASF. In the best case, you'll receive average of 1 drop per 30 minutes. In the worst case, you won't receive any card even for 4 hours since starting ASF. Both of those situations are normal and covered in our performance section.
The only thing which heavily affects speed of farming is selected cards farming algorithm for your bot instance. Everything else has negligible effect and will not make farming faster, while some actions such as launching ASF process several times will even make it worse. If you really have an urge of making every single second from farming process, then ASF allows you to fine-tune some core farming variables such as FarmingDelay - all of them are explained in configuration. However, as I said, the effect is negligible, and choosing proper cards farming algorithm for given account is one and the only crucial choice that can heavily affect speed of farming, everything else is pure cosmetic. Instead of worrying about farming speed, just launch ASF and let it do its job - I can assure you that it's doing it in the most effective way I could come up with. The less you care, the more you will be satisfied.
ASF gives you rough approximation based on number of cards you need to drop, and your chosen algorithm - this is nowhere close to the actual time that you will spend on farming, which is usually longer than this, as ASF assumes best case only, and ignores all Steam Network quirks, internet disconnections, overload of Steam servers and likewise. It should be seen only as a general indicator how long you can expect ASF to be farming, very often in best case, as actual time will differ, even significantly in some cases. Like pointed out above, do not try to guess how long given game will be farmed, it's not up to you, neither ASF to decide.
ASF is a C# program that requires working implementation of .NET Core. Currently there is no native .NET Core build for Android itself, but there are proper and working builds for linux on ARM architecture, so it's totally possible to use something like Linux Deploy for installing Linux, then using ASF in such Linux chroot as usual.
It's very likely that in the future we'll see working .NET Core for Android itself.
No, this is against Steam ToS and Valve clearly stated that with last wave of community bans for farming TF2 items. ASF is a Steam cards farming program, not game items farmer - it doesn't have any capability of farming game items, and it's not planned to add such feature in the future, ever, mainly because of violating Steam terms of use. Please do not ask about this - the best you can get is a report from some salty user and you having problems. The same goes for all other types of idling, such as idling drops from CS:GO broadcasts. ASF is focusing on Steam trading cards exclusively.
Yes, through several different ways. If you want to alter the default order of idling queue, then that's what FarmingOrders bot configuration property can be used for. If you want to manually blacklist given games from being idled automatically, you can use idling blacklist which is available with ib command. If you'd like to idle everything but give some apps priority over everything else, that is what idling priority queue available with iq command can be used for. And finally, if you want to idle specific games of your choice only, then you can use FarmPriorityQueueOnly bot configuration property in order to achieve this, together with adding your selected apps to idling priority queue.
In addition to managing automatic cards farming module which was described above, you can also switch ASF to manual farming mode with play command, or use some other misc external settings such as GamesPlayedWhileIdle bot configuration property.
Yes, ASF allows you to do that through at least several ways.
The most optimal way to achieve that is to make use of GamesPlayedWhileIdle configuration property, which will idle your chosen appIDs when ASF has no cards to idle. If you'd like to idle your games all the time, even if you do have card drops from other games, then you can combine it with FarmPriorityQueueOnly, so ASF will idle only those games for card drops that you explicitly set, or Paused, which will cause cards farming module to be paused until you unpause it yourself.
Alternatively, you can make use of the play command, which will cause ASF to play your selected games. However, keep in mind that play should be used only for games you want to idle temporarily, as it's not a persistent state, causing ASF to revert back to default state e.g. upon disconnection from Steam network. Therefore, we recommend you to use GamesPlayedWhileIdle, unless you indeed want to start your selected games just for a short time period, and then revert back to general flow.
I'm Linux / OS X user, will ASF idle games that are not available for my OS? Will ASF idle 64-bit games when I'm running it on 32-bit OS?
Yes, ASF is not even bothering with downloading actual game files, so it will work with all your licenses tied to your Steam account, regardless of any platform or technical requirements. It should also work for games tied to specific region (region-locked games) even when you're not in the matching region, although we don't guarantee that (it worked last time we tried).
The only similarity is the general purpose of both programs, which is idling Steam games in order to receive card drops. Everything else, including the actual idling method, used algorithms, program structure, functionality, compatibility, ending with the source code itself, is entirely different and those two programs have nothing common with each other, even the core foundation (IM is running on .NET Framework, ASF on .NET Core). ASF was created to solve IM issues that were not possible to solve with a simple code edit - this is why ASF was written from scratch, without using a single code line or even general idea from IM, because that code and those ideas were entirely flawed to begin with. IM and ASF are like Windows and Linux - both are operating systems and both can be installed on your PC, but they share almost nothing with each other, apart from serving the similar purpose.
This is also why you shouldn't compare ASF to IM based on IM expectations. You should treat ASF and IM as entirely independent programs with their own exclusive sets of features. Some of them indeed overlap and you can find a particular feature in both of them, but very rarely, as ASF is serving its purpose with entirely different approach compared to IM.
Yes. ASF is much more reliable and includes many built-in functions that are crucial regardless of the way how you idle, that IM simply doesn't offer.
ASF has proper logic for unreleased games - IM will attempt to idle games that have cards added already, even if they weren't released yet. Of course, it's not possible to idle those games until release date, so your idling process will be stuck. This will require you to either add it to the blacklist, wait for release, or skip manually. Neither of those solutions is good, and all of them require your attention - ASF automatically skips idling of unreleased games (temporarily), and returns back to them later when they are, completely avoiding the problem and dealing with it efficiently.
ASF also has proper logic of series videos. There are many videos on Steam that have cards, yet are announced with wrong appID on the badges page, such as Double Fine Adventure - IM will falsely idle wrong appID, which will yield no drops and process being stuck. Once again, you'll need to either blacklist it or skip manually, both requiring your attention. ASF automatically discovers proper appID for idling which does result in card drops.
In addition to that, ASF is much more stable and reliable when it comes to network problems and Steam quirks - it works most of the time and doesn't require your attention at all once configured, while IM often breaks for many people, requires extra fixes or simply doesn't work regardless. It's also fully dependent on your Steam client, which means that it can't work when your Steam client is experiencing any serious issues. ASF is working properly as long as it can connect to Steam network, and doesn't require Steam client running or even being installed.
Those are 3 very important points why you should consider using ASF, as they directly affect everybody idling Steam cards and there is no way to say "this doesn't consider me", since Steam maintenances and quirks are happening to everybody. There are dozen of extra less and more important reasons which you may learn about in the rest of the FAQ. So shortly speaking, yes, you should use ASF even when you don't need any extra ASF feature that is available when compared to IM.
In addition to that, IM is officially discontinued and can break completely in the future, without anybody bothering to fix it, considering existence of much more powerful solutions (not only ASF). IM already doesn't work for a lot of people, and that number is only going up, not down. You should avoid using obsolete software in the first place, not only IM but all other deprecated programs as well. No active maintainer means that nobody cares whether it works or not, nobody verifies if it does and nobody is responsible for its functionality, which is a crucial matter in terms of security. It's enough that there will be a critical bug causing actual problems to Steam infrastructure - with nobody fixing it, Steam can issue another ban wave in which you'll get hit without even being aware of this being an issue, as already happened to people using, guess what, obsolete version of ASF.
It depends what you consider "interesting" for you. If you plan to idle more accounts than one then the answer is already obvious since ASF allows you to idle all of them with one superior solution, saving resources, hassle, and compatibility issues. However, if you're asking that question then most likely you don't have this particular need, so let's evaluate other benefits that apply to one single account used in ASF.
First and foremost, you have some built-in features mentioned above that are core for idling regardless of your end-goal, and very often that alone is already enough to consider using ASF. But you already know that, so let's move onto some more interesting features:
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You can idle offline (
OnlineStatusofOfflinefeature). Idling offline makes it possible for you to skip your Steam in-game status entirely, which allows you to idle with ASF while showing "Online" on Steam at the same time, without your friends even noticing that ASF is playing a game on your behalf. This is superior feature, since it allows you to remain online in your Steam client, while not annoying your friends with constant game changes, or misleading them into thinking that you're playing a game while in reality you're not. This point alone makes it worthwhile to use ASF if you respect your own friends, but it's only the beginning. It's also nice to note that this feature has nothing to do with Steam privacy settings - if you launch the game yourself, then you'll properly show as in-game to your friends, making only ASF part invisible and not affecting your account at all. -
You can skip refundable games (
SkipRefundableGamesfeature). ASF has proper built-in logic for refundable games and you can configure ASF to not farm refundable games automatically. This allows you to evaluate yourself if your newly-bought game from Steam store was worth your money, without ASF trying to drop cards from it as soon as possible. If you play it for 2+ hours, or 2 weeks pass since your purchase, then ASF will proceed with that game as it's not refundable anymore. Until then you have full control whether you enjoy it or not and you can easily refund it if needed, without having to manually blacklist that game or not use ASF for entire duration. -
You can automatically mark new items as received (
BotBehaviourofDismissInventoryNotificationsfeature). Idling with ASF will result in your account receiving new card drops. You already know that this is going to happen, so let ASF clear that useless notification for you, ensuring that only important things will raise your attention. Of course, only if you want to. -
You can automatically receive cards from Steam events (
AutoSteamSaleEventfeature). ASF allows you to automate going through discovery queue during Steam sale, of course only if you'd like to make use of that. This saves enormous amount of time each day while Steam sale is on, and ensures that you'll never miss your daily card drops again. -
You can customize preferred farming order with more available options (
FarmingOrdersfeature). Perhaps you want to idle your newly bought games first? Or your oldest ones? According to number of card drops? Badge levels you already crafted? Played hours? Alphabetically? According to AppIDs? Or maybe fully random? That's entirely up to you to decide. -
ASF can help you complete your sets (
TradingPreferenceswithSteamTradeMatcherfeature). With a bit more advanced tinkering, you can convert your ASF into fully-featured user-bot that will automatically accept STM offers, helping you each day to match your sets without any user interaction. ASF even includes its very own ASF 2FA module allowing you to import your Steam mobile authenticator and let you fully automate the entire process with accepting confirmations as well. Or, maybe you want to accept manually and let ASF only prepare those trades for you? That's once again, fully up to you to decide. -
ASF can redeem keys in background for you (background games redeemer feature). Maybe you have a hundred of keys from various bundles that you're too lazy to redeem yourself, going through bunch of windows and agreeing to Steam terms and conditions over and over again. Why not copy-paste your list of keys into ASF and let it do its job? ASF will automatically redeem all of those keys in background, providing you with appropriate output to let you know how each redeem attempt turned out. Moreover, if you have hundreds of keys, you're guaranteed to get rate-limited by Steam sooner or later, and ASF also knows about that, it'll patiently wait for the rate-limit to go away, and resume where it left.
We could now go on and on with entire ASF wiki, pointing out every single feature of the program, but we have to draw a line somewhere. This is it, this is a list of features that you can enjoy as ASF user, where just one of those could easily be considered a major reason to never look back, and we actually listed a lot of them, with even more you can learn about on the rest of our wiki. Ah yes, and we didn't even go into detail with things like ASF's API allowing you to script your own commands, or awesome bots management, since we wanted to keep it simple.
Yes, although the explanation is rather complicated.
On each new process spawned and terminated on your system, steam client automatically sends a request containing all of your games that you're currently playing - this way steam network can calculate hours and make cards drop. However, steam network counts your time played in 1-second intervals, and sending new request resets the current status. In other words, if you did spawn/kill new process every 0.5 second, you'd never drop any card because every 0.5 second steam client would send a new request and steam network would never count even 1 second of play time. Moreover, because of how operating system works, it's actually quite common to see new processes being spawned/terminated without you even doing anything, so even if you're doing nothing on your PC - there are many processes still working in the background, spawning/terminating other processes all the time. Idle master is based on steam client, so this mechanism affects you if you're using it.
ASF is not based on steam client, it has its own steam client implementation. Thanks to that, what ASF is doing, is not spawning any process, but actually sending one, real request to steam network that we started playing a game. This is the same request that would be sent by steam client, but because we have actual control over the ASF steam client, we don't need to spawn new processes, and we're not mimicking steam client regarding send request on every process change, so the mechanism explained above doesn't affect us. Thanks to that, we never interrupt that 1 second interval on steam web side, and that enhances our farming speed.
No. The interrupts that are happening with normal steam client and idle master have negligible effect on the card drops, so it's not any noticeable difference that would make ASF superior.
However, there is a difference, and you can clearly notice that, as depending on how busy your OS is, cards will drop faster, from a few seconds to even a few minutes, if you're extremely unlucky. Although I wouldn't consider using ASF only because it drops cards faster, as both ASF and Idle Master are affected by how steam web works, ASF just interacts with steam web more effectively, while Idle Master can't control what steam client is actually doing (so it's not Idle Master's fault, but steam client's itself).
Yes, although ASF knows better when to use that feature, based on selected cards farming algorithm. Card drops rate when idling multiple games is close to zero, this is why ASF is using multiple games idling exclusively for hours in order to overcome HoursUntilCardDrops faster, for up to 32 games at once. This is also why you should focus on configuration part of the ASF, and let algorithms decide what is the most optimal way to achieve the goal - what you think is right, is not necessarily right in reality, idling multiple games at once will not provide you with any card drops.
No, ASF doesn't support, neither encourages usage of Steam glitches.
No, the whole point of Steam cards system change was to fight with false statistics and ghost players. ASF won't contribute towards that more than necessary, adding such feature is not planned and won't happen. If your game receives card drops in usual way, ASF will idle them as soon as possible.
No. ASF unlike IM has independent Steam client included, and Steam network allows only one Steam client at a time to play a game. You can however disconnect ASF any time you like by starting a game (and clicking "OK" when asked if Steam network should disconnect other client) - ASF will then patiently wait till you're done playing, and resume the process afterwards. Alternatively, you can still play in offline mode anytime you like, if that is satisfying for you.
Keep in mind that cards drop rate when playing multiple games is close to 0 anyway, therefore there are no direct benefits from being able to do that with IM, while there are strong benefits of no interfering with other games launched with ASF, which is crucial e.g. VAC-wise.
No, it's not possible because ASF (unlike Idle Master or SAM) does not interfere in any way with steam client nor its processes. It's physically impossible to get VAC ban for using ASF, even during playing on secured servers while ASF is running - this is because ASF doesn't even require Steam Client being installed at all in order to work properly. ASF is the only farming program that can currently guarantee being VAC-free.
Can using ASF prevent me from playing on VAC-secured servers, as stated here?
ASF does not require Steam client being running or even installed at all. According to this concept, it should not cause any VAC-related issues, because ASF guarantees lack of interfering with Steam client and all its processes - this is the main point when talking about VAC-free guarantee that ASF offers.
According to users and best of my knowledge, this is the case right now, as nobody reported any issues like stated in the link above while using ASF. We couldn't reproduce the issue above with ASF as well, while clearly reproducing it with Idle Master.
However, keep in mind that Valve could still add ASF to the blacklist at some point, but it's a complete nonsense as even if they do that, you could still play VAC-secured games from your PC, and use ASF at the same time e.g. on your server, so I'm pretty sure that they know very well that ASF should not be a suspect VAC-wise, and they won't make our lifes harder by blacklisting ASF for no reason. Still, in the worst case you'll be unable to play, like stated above, because VAC-free guarantee of ASF is still here regardless if Steam blacklists ASF binary, or not (and you can still launch ASF on any other machine without Steam client being installed at all). Right now there is no need to do any of that, and let's hope it stays like this.
If you ask if ASF is safe as a software, which means that it won't cause any damage to your computer, won't steal your private data, install viruses or any other stuff like that - it is safe. ASF is free of malware, data stealing, cryptocurrency miners and any (and all) other doubtful behaviour that can be considered malicious or unwanted by the user. In addition to that we have a dedicated statistics section which covers our privacy policy and ASF behaviour that goes beyond what you configured the program to do yourself.
Our code is open-source, and distributed binaries are always compiled from publicly available sources by automated and trusted continuous integration systems, and not even developers themselves. Each build is reproducible by following our build script and will result in exactly the same, deterministic IL (binary) code. If you for whatever reason don't trust our builds, you can always compile and use ASF from source, including all libraries that ASF is using (such as SteamKit2), which are open-source too.
In the end however, it's always a matter of trust to the developer(s) of your application, so you should decide yourself if you consider ASF safe or not, potentially supporting your decision with technical arguments specified above. Do not blindly believe something only because I said so - check yourself, as that's the only way to make sure.
In order to answer that question, we should take a closer look at Steam ToS. Steam doesn't prohibit using of multiple accounts, in fact, it allows it implying that you can use same mobile authenticator on more than one account. What it however doesn't allow is sharing accounts with other people, but we're not doing that here.
The only real point that considers ASF is the following:
You may not use Cheats, automation software (bots), mods, hacks, or any other unauthorized third-party software, to modify or automate any Subscription Marketplace process.
The question is what in fact is Subscription Marketplace process. As we can read:
An example of a Subscription Marketplace is the Steam Community Market
We're not modifying or automating subscription marketplace process, if by subscription marketplace we understand steam community market or steam store. However...
Valve may cancel your Account or any particular Subscription(s) at any time in the event that (a) Valve ceases providing such Subscriptions to similarly situated Subscribers generally, or (b) you breach any terms of this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use).
Therefore, as with every Steam software, ASF is not authorized by Valve and I cannot guarantee that you won't be suspended if Valve suddenly decides that they're banning accounts using ASF now. This is exceptionally unlikely considering the fact that ASF is being used on more than half a million of Steam accounts, but still a possibility, regardless of actual probability.
Especially because:
In regard to all Subscriptions, Content and Services that are not authored by Valve, Valve does not screen such third-party content available on Steam or through other sources. Valve assumes no responsibility or liability for such third party content. Some third-party application software is capable of being used by businesses for business purposes - however, you may only acquire such software via Steam for private personal use.
However, Valve clearly acknowledges "Steam idlers" existing, as stated here, so if you asked me, I'm pretty sure that if they weren't fine with them, they'd already do something instead of pointing out that they could cause problems VAC-wise. The key word here is Steam idlers, for example ASF, and not game idlers.
Please note that above is only our interpretation of Steam ToS and various points - ASF is licensed under Apache 2.0 License, which clearly states:
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, ASF is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
You're using this software at your own risk. It's very unlikely that you can get banned for that, but if you do, you can blame only yourself for that.
Yes, we had at least a few incidents so far that resulted in some kind of Steam suspension. Whether ASF itself was the root cause or not is entirely different story that we'll probably never get to know.
First case involved a guy with over 1000+ bots getting trade banned (together with all bots), most likely due to excessive usage of loot ASF executed on all bots at once, or other suspicious one-side amount of trades in a very short time.
Hello XXX, Thank you for contacting Steam Support. It looks like this account was used to manage a network of bot accounts. Botting is a violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement.
Please, use some common sense and don't assume that you can do such crazy things only because ASF allows you to do that. Doing loot ASF on over 1k of bots can be easily considered a DDoS attack, and personally I'm not shocked that somebody got banned for such a thing. Keep in mind some bare common sense and minimum of fair use in regards to Steam service, and most likely you'll be fine.
Second case involved a guy with 170+ bots getting banned during Steam's 2017 Winter Sale.
Your account was blocked for violation of the agreement of the subscriber Steam. Judging by the exchanges and other factors, this account was used to illegally collect collectible cards on Steam, as well as related and not only commercial activities. The account has been permanently blocked and Steam Support can not provide additional support on this issue.
This case is once again very hard to analyze, because of vague response from Steam support that barely offers any details. Based on my personal thoughts, this user probably exchanged Steam cards for some kind of money (level up bot?) or in some other way tried to cash out on Steam. In case you were unaware, this is also illegal according to Steam ToS.
Third case involved user with 120+ bots being banned for breach of Steam online conduct.
Hello XXX, Thank you for contacting Steam Support. This and other accounts were used for flooding our network infrastructure, which is a violation of Steam online conduct. The account has been permanently blocked and Steam Support can not provide additional support on this issue.
This case is a bit easier to analyze because of extra details provided by the user. Apparently the user was using a very outdated ASF version that included a bug causing ASF to send excessive number of requests to Steam servers. The bug itself did not exist at first but was activated due to Steam breaking change that was fixed in future version. ASF is supported only in latest stable version released on GitHub. Software is written by humans, and humans tend to make mistakes. If the mistake has a global scope, it's quickly being patched up and released to all users as a bugfix. Valve won't suddenly ban half a million of ASF users due to my mistake, for obvious reasons. However, if you intentionally resign from using up-to-date ASF, then by definition you're in a very small minority of users that are exposed to incidents like these due to no support, as there is nobody watching over your outdated version of ASF, nobody fixing it and nobody ensuring that you won't get outright banned by just launching it. Please use up-to-date software, not only ASF, but all other applications as well.
The most recent case happened around June of 2021, according to the user:
Using your program, I have been making booster packages with 28 accounts for 3 years and with 128 accounts for the last 6 months. I was online with maximum 15 accounts simultaneously to make booster packs and send them to the main account. Last month, I increased the number of online accounts simultaneously to 20, and 1 week after that, all of my accounts were banned. This email is not to blame you, on the contrary, I was always aware of the consequences. I wanted you to know what types of behavior result in a permanent ban.
It's hard to say whether increase in concurrent accounts online was the direct reason for the ban, I wouldn't count on that, instead I believe that the number of accounts alone was the main culprit, increased concurrency of online accounts probably just drew attention to the user in question, as he clearly had far more bots than our recommendation.
All of the incidents above have one thing in common - ASF is just a tool and it's your decision how you're going to make use of it. You do not get banned for using ASF directly, but for how you're using it. It can be a helper tool idling just one single account, or a massive farming network made from thousands of bots. In any of those cases, I'm not offering legal advice, and you should decide yourself about your ASF usage in the first place. I'm not hiding any information that could help you, e.g. the fact that ASF got some people banned, as I have no reason to - it's your choice what you want to do with that information. If you ask me - use some common sense, avoid owning more bots than our recommendation, do not send hundreds of trades at the same time, always use up-to-date ASF version and you should be fine. Every single incident of this nature for some reason always happened to people that have disregarded our recommendation and decided that they know better than us how many bots they can run. Whether it's just a coincidence or some actual factor, that's up to you to decide. I'm not offering any legal advice, only giving you my thoughts that you can find useful, or disregard them entirely and operate only on facts linked above.
You can find detailed explanation in statistics section. You should review it if you care about your privacy, e.g. if you're wondering why accounts being used in ASF are joining our Steam group. ASF doesn't collect any sensitive information, and doesn't share it with any third-parties.
Yes, and that version is not unsupported in any way, just not officially built. Check out compatibility section for generic variant. ASF doesn't have any strong dependency upon the OS, and it can work anywhere where you can get a working .NET Core runtime, which includes 32-bit Windows, even if there is no win-x86 OS-specific package from us.
Yes, and we're very happy to hear that you're enjoying our project! You can find various donation possibilities under every release and also on the main page. It's nice to note that in addition to generic money donations we also accept Steam items, so nothing is stopping you from donating skins, keys or a small part of the cards that you've idled with ASF if you'd like to. Thank you in advance for your generosity!
Yes, you must set it in SteamParentalCode bot config property. This is mainly because ASF does access many protected parts of your Steam account and it's impossible for ASF to operate without it.
I don't want ASF to farm any games by default, yet I want to use extra ASF features. Is this possible?
Yes, if you just want to start ASF with paused cards farming module, you can set Paused bot config property to true in order to achieve that. This will allow you to resume it during runtime.
If you want to completely disable cards farming module and ensure that it'll never run without you explicitly telling it otherwise, then we recommend to set FarmPriorityQueueOnly to true, which instead of just pausing it, will disable the idling completely until you add the games to idle priority queue yourself.
With cards farming module paused/disabled, you can make use of extra ASF features, such as GamesPlayedWhileIdle.
ASF is a console app, there is no window to be minimized, because window is created for you by your OS. You can however use any third-party tool capable of doing so, such as RBTray for Windows, or screen for Linux/OS X. Those are only examples, there are many other apps with similar functionality.
Yes. ASF is using the same method to log in to Steam network as the official client, therefore it also preserves ability to receive booster packs for accounts that are being used in ASF. Moreover, preserving that ability doesn't even require logging in into Steam community, so you can safely use OnlineStatus of Offline if you'd like to.
Yes, through several different ways. Check out commands section for more info.
Thank you for your interest! You can find all details in our localization section.
Yes, it's explained in commands section. You can do so through Steam group chat, although using ASF-ui could be easier for you.
Cards farming rate differs from game to game, as you can read in performance. It takes a while, usually several hours per game, and you shouldn't expect cards to drop in a few minutes since launching a program. If you can see that ASF actively checks cards status, and switches the game after current one is fully idled, then everything works fine. It's possible that you've enabled an option such as DismissInventoryNotifications of BotBehaviour which automatically dismisses inventory notifications. Check out configuration for details.
Simply shutdown the ASF process, for example by clicking [X] on Windows. If instead you want to stop a particular bot of your choice but keep other ones running, then take a look at Enabled bot config property, or stop command. If you instead want to stop automatic idling process, yet keep ASF running for your account, then that's what Paused bot config property and pause command is for.
ASF as a program doesn't have any hard upper limit of bot instances, so you can run as much as you have memory on your machine, however, you're still being limited by the Steam network and other Steam services. Currently you can run up to 100-200 bots with a single IP and a single ASF instance. It's possible to run more bots with more IPs and more ASF instances, by working around IP limitations. Keep in mind that if you're using that big amount of bots, you should control their number yourself, such as making sure that all of them in fact are logging in and working at the same time. ASF was not tweaked for that huge number of bots, and the general rule applies that the more bots you have, the more issues you'll encounter. Also notice that the limit above in general depends on many internal factors, it's approximation rather than a strict limit - you will most likely be able to run more/less bots than specified above.
ASF team suggests running (and owning) up to 10 bots in total, anything above is not supported and done at your own risk, against our suggestion made here. This recommendation is based on internal Valve guidelines, as well as our own suggestions. Whether you're going to comply with this rule or not is your choice, ASF as a tool will not go against your own will, even if it'll result in your Steam accounts being suspended for doing so. Therefore, ASF will display you a warning if you'll go above what we recommend, but still allow you to run anything you want at your own risk and lack of our support.
You can run as many ASF instances on one machine as you like, assuming every instance has its own directory and its own configs, and account used in one instance is not used in another one. However, ask yourself why you want to do that. ASF is optimized to handle more than a hundred of accounts at the same time, and launching that hundred of bots in their own ASF instances degrades performance, takes more OS resources (such as CPU and memory), and causes a potential synchronization issues between standalone ASF instances, as ASF is forced to share its limiters with other instances.
Therefore, my strong suggestion is, always run maximum of one ASF instance per one IP/interface. If you have more IPs/interfaces, by all means you can run more ASF instances, with every instance using its own IP/interface or unique WebProxy setting. If you don't, launching more ASF instances is totally pointless, as you won't gain anything from launching more than 1 instance per a single IP/interface. Steam will not magically allow you to run more bots just because you've launched them in another ASF instance, and ASF doesn't limit you to begin with.
Of course, there are still valid use cases for multiple ASF instances on the same network interface, such as hosting ASF service for your friends with each friend having its own unique ASF instance in order to guarantee isolation between bots and even the ASF processes themselves, however, you're not circumventing any Steam limitations this way, that's entirely different purpose.
Status indicates how given redeem attempt turned out. There are many different statuses possible, most common ones include:
| Status | Beschrijving |
|---|---|
| NoDetail | "OK" status indicating success - the key was successfully redemeed. |
| Timeout | Steam network didn't respond in given time, we don't know if the key was redeemed, or not (most likely was, but you can try again). |
| BadActivationCode | The provided key is invalid (not recognized as any valid key by Steam network). |
| DuplicateActivationCode | The provided key was already redeemed by some other account, or revoked by developer/publisher. |
| AlreadyPurchased | Your account already owns packageID that is connected with this key. Keep in mind that this does not indicate whether the key is DuplicateActivationCode or not - only that it's valid and it wasn't used in this attempt. |
| RestrictedCountry | This is region-locked key and your account is not in the valid region that is permitted to redeem it. |
| DoesNotOwnRequiredApp | You can't redeem that key as you're missing some other app - mainly base game when you're attempting to redeem DLC package. |
| RateLimited | You made too many redeem attempts and your account was temporarily blocked. Try again in an hour. |
No. ASF is not affiliated with any service and all such claims are false. Your Steam account is your property and you can use your account in whatever way you wish, but Valve clearly stated in official ToS that:
You are responsible for the confidentiality of your login and password and for the security of your computer system. Valve is not responsible for the use of your password and Account or for all of the communication and activity on Steam that results from use of your login name and password by you, or by any person to whom you may have intentionally or by negligence disclosed your login and/or password in violation of this confidentiality provision.
ASF is licensed on liberal Apache 2.0 License, which allows other developers to further integrate ASF with their own projects and services legally. However, such third-party projects utilizing ASF are not guaranteed to be secure, reviewed, appropriate or legal according to Steam ToS. If you want to know our opinion, we strongly encourage you to NOT share ANY of your account details with third-party services. If such service turns out to be a typical scam, you'll be left alone with the problem, most likely without your Steam account and ASF won't take any responsibility for third-party services claiming to be safe and secure, because ASF team did not authorize neither reviewed any of those. In other words, you're using them at your own risk, against our suggestion made above.
In addition to that, official Steam ToS clearly states that:
You may not reveal, share or otherwise allow others to use your password or Account except as otherwise specifically authorized by Valve.
It's your account and your choice. Just don't say that nobody warned you. ASF as a program meets all rules mentioned above, as you're not sharing your account details with anyone, and you're using the program for your own personal use, but any other "cards farming service" does require from you your account credentials, so it also violates the rule above (actually several of them). Like with Steam ToS evaluation, we're not offering any legal advice, and you should decide yourself if you want to use those services, or not - according to us it directly violates Steam ToS and may result in suspension if Valve finds out. Like pointed out above, we strongly recommend to NOT use any of such services.
One of my games is being farmed for more than 10 hours now, but I still didn't get any cards from it!
The reason for that could be related to known issue of Steam, which happens when you have two licenses for the same game, one of which has card drops limited. This usually happens when you activate game for free during a mass giveaway on Steam, and then activate a key for the same game (but without limitations), e.g. from a paid bundle. If such situation happens, Steam reports on badge page that game still has cards to drop, but no matter how much you play the game - cards will never drop due to free license on your account. Since it's not an ASF issue, but a Steam one, we can't somehow circumvent it on ASF's side, and you need to solve it yourself.
There are two ways to solve the issue. Firstly, you can blacklist this game in ASF, either with ibadd command or with Blacklist configuration property. This will prevent ASF from trying to farm cards from this game, but will not solve the underlying issue which prevents you from obtaining card drops from the affected game. Secondly, you can use Steam support self-service tool to remove free license from your account, leaving only full license that includes the card drops. In order to do so, firstly visit your licenses and product key activations page and locate both free and paid license for the affected game. Usually it's fairly easy - both have similar name, but free one has "limited free promotional package" or other "promo" in the license name, plus "complimentary" in "acquisition method" field. Sometimes it might be more tricky, for example if free package was in some bundle and has a different name. If you have found two licenses like that - then it's indeed the issue described here, and you can safely remove free license without losing the game.
In order to remove the free license from your account, visit Steam support page and put the affected game name into the search field, the game should be available in "products" section, click on it. Alternatively, you can just use https://help.steampowered.com/wizard/HelpWithGame?appid=<appID> link and replace <appID> with appID of the game that causes troubles. Afterwards, click on "I want to permanently remove this game from my account" and then select the faulty free license that you've found above, usually the one with "limited free promotional package" in the name (or similar). After removal of the free license, ASF should be able to drop cards from the affected game without issues, you should restart the idling operation after the removal just to be sure that Steam picks up the right license this time.
There are two main reasons here. First and most obvious reason is the fact that you're referring to Steam store where given game is announced as card drops enabled game. This is wrong assumption, as it simply states that the game has card drops included, but not necessarily this function for that game is enabled right away. You can read more about this in official announcement.
In short, card drops icon in Steam store doesn't mean anything, check your badge pages for confirmation whether a game has card drops enabled or not - this is also what ASF is doing. If your game doesn't appear on the list as a game with cards possible to drop, then this game is not possible to idle, regardless of reason.
Second issue is less obvious, and it's the situation when you can see that your game indeed is available with card drops on your badge page, yet it's not being idled by ASF right away. Unless you're hitting some other bug, such as ASF being unable to check badge pages (described below), it's simply a cache effect and on ASF side Steam is still reporting outdated badges page. This issue should solve itself sooner or later, when cache gets invalidated. There is also no way to fix this on our side.
Of course, all of that assumes that you're running ASF with default untouched settings, since you could also add this game to idling blacklist, use FarmPriorityQueueOnly, SkipRefundableGames and so on.
It does, but not in real-time. Steam records your playtime in fixed intervals and schedules update for it, but you're not guaranteed to have it updated immediately the moment you quit the session, let alone during such. If it was possible to skip playtime while idling cards then you can be sure that we'd have it implemented in ASF long time ago, and actually use it in default settings. But we don't, and we don't exactly because it's not possible - just because the playtime isn't updated in real-time doesn't mean that it's not recorded.
ASF writes to its log a bunch of information on various logging levels. Our objective is to explain precisely what ASF is doing, including what Steam issues it has to deal with, or other problems to overcome. Most of the time not everything is relevant, this is why we have two major levels being used in ASF in terms of problems - a warning level, and error level.
General ASF rule is that warnings are not errors, therefore they should not be reported. A warning is an indicator to you that something potentially unwanted happen. Whether it was Steam not reacting, API throwing errors or your network connection being down - it's a warning, and it means we expected it to happen, so don't bother ASF development with it. Of course you're free to ask about them or get help by using our support, but you shouldn't assume that those are ASF errors worth reporting (unless we confirm otherwise).
Errors on the other hand indicate a situation that should not happen, therefore they're worth reporting as long as you made sure that it's not you who is causing them. If it's a common situation that we expect to happen, then it'll be converted to a warning instead. Otherwise, it's possibly a bug that should be corrected, not silently ignored, assuming it's not a result of your own technical issue. For example, putting invalid content in ASF.json file will throw an error, as ASF won't be able to parse it, but it was you who put it there, so you should not report that error to us (unless you confirmed that ASF is wrong and your structure is in fact absolutely correct).
In one TL;DR sentence - report errors, don't report warnings. You can still ask about warnings and receive help in our support sections.
In normal conditions, any ASF crash or exit will generate a log.txt in the program's directory for you to view, which can be used for finding the cause of that. In addition to that, a few last log files are also archived in logs directory, since the main log.txt file is overwritten with each ASF run.
However, if even .NET Core runtime isn't able to boot on your machine, then log.txt will not be generated. If that happens to you then you most likely forgot to install .NET Core prerequisites, as stated in setting up guide. Other common problems include trying to launch wrong ASF variant for your OS, or in other way missing native .NET Core runtime dependencies. If the console window closes too soon for you to read the message, then open independent console and launch ASF binary from there. For example on Windows, open ASF directory, hold Shift, right click inside the folder and choose "open command window here" (or powershell), then type into the console .\ArchiSteamFarm.exe and confirm with enter. This way you'll get precise message why ASF is not starting properly.
This shows up as a message in Steam overlay that the account is being used somewhere else while you're playing. This issue can have two different reasons.
One reason is caused by broken packages (games) that specifically don't hold a playing lock properly, yet expect that lock to be possesed by the client. An example of such package would be Skyrim SE. Your Steam client launches the game properly, but that game doesn't register itself as being used. Because of that, ASF sees that it's free to resume the process, which it does, and that kicks you out of Steam network, as Steam suddenly detects that the account is being used in another place.
Second reason could come up if you're playing on your PC while ASF is waiting (especially on another machine) and you lose your network connection. In this case, Steam network marks you as offline and releases playing lock (like above), which triggers ASF (e.g. on another machine) into resuming farming. When your PC comes back online, Steam can't acquire playing lock anymore (that is now held by ASF, also similar to above) and shows the same message.
Both causes on the ASF side are actually very hard to workaround, as ASF simply resumes farming once Steam network informs it that account is free to be used again. This is what is happening normally when you close the game, but with broken packages this can happen immediately, even if your game is still running. ASF has no way to know whether you got disconnected, stopped playing a game or that you're still playing a game that doesn't hold playing lock appropriately.
The only proper solution to this problem is manually pausing your bot with pause before you start playing, and resuming it with resume once you're done. Alternatively you can just ignore the problem and act the same as if you played with offline Steam client.
ASF can only try to establish connection with Steam servers, and it can fail due to many reasons, including lack of internet connection, Steam being down, your firewall blocking connection, third-party tools, incorrectly configured routes or temporary failures. You can enable Debug mode to check out more verbose log stating exact failure reasons, although usually it's simply caused by your own actions, such as using "CS:GO MM Server Picker" that blacklists a lot of Steam IPs, making it very hard for you to actually reach Steam network.
ASF will do its best to establish connection, which includes not only asking about updated list of servers but also trying another IP when last one fails, so if it's truly a temporary problem with some specific server or route, ASF will connect sooner or later. However, if you're behind firewall or in some other way unable to reach Steam servers, then obviously you need to fix it yourself, with potential help of Debug mode.
It's also possible that your machine is not able to establish connection with Steam servers using default protocol in ASF. You can alter protocols that ASF is permitted to use by modifying SteamProtocols global configuration property. For example, if you have problems reaching Steam with UDP protocol (e.g. due to firewalls), perhaps you'll have more luck with TCP or WebSocket.
In a very unlikely situation of having incorrect servers being cached, for example because of moving ASF config folder from one machine to another machine located in entirely different country, deleting ASF.db in order to refresh Steam servers on the next launch may help. Very often it's not needed and doesn't have to be done, as that list is automatically refreshed on first launch, as well as when the connection is established - we're just mentioning it as a way to purge anything related to list of Steam servers cached by ASF.
Usually it means that you're using Steam parental PIN to access your account, yet you forgot to put it in ASF config. You must put valid PIN in SteamParentalCode bot config property, otherwise ASF will not be able to access most of web content, therefore will not be able to work properly. Head over to configuration in order to learn more about SteamParentalCode.
Other reasons include temporary Steam problem, network issue or likewise. If issue won't solve itself after several hours and you're sure that you configured ASF appropriately, feel free to let us know about that.
Usually it means that you're using Steam parental PIN to access your account, yet you forgot to put it in ASF config. You must put valid PIN in SteamParentalCode bot config property, otherwise ASF will not be able to access most of web content, therefore will not be able to work properly. Head over to configuration in order to learn more about SteamParentalCode.
If parental PIN is not the reason, then this is a most common error, and you should get used to that, it simply means that ASF sent a request to Steam Network, and didn't get a valid response, 5 times in a row. Usually it means that Steam is either down or is having some difficulties or maintenance - ASF is aware of such issues and you should not worry about them, unless they're happening constantly for longer than several hours, and other users do not have such problems.
How to check if Steam is being down? Steam Status is an excellent source of checking if Steam should be up, if you notice errors, especially related to Community or Web API, then Steam is having difficulties. You may want to leave ASF alone and let it do its job after a short while of downtime, or quit it and wait yourself.
That's however not always the case, as in some situations Steam issues may not be detected by Steam Status, for example such case happened when Valve broke HTTPS support for Steam Community 7th June 2016 - accessing SteamCommunity through HTTPS was throwing an error. Therefore, do not blindly trust Steam Status either, it's best to check yourself if everything works as supposed to.
In addition to that, Steam includes various rate-limiting measures which will temporarily ban your IP if you make excessive number of requests at once. ASF is aware of that and offers you several different limiters in the config, which you should make use of. Default settings were tweaked based on sane amount of bots, if you're using so huge amount that even Steam is telling you to go away, then you either tweak them until it no longer tells you to, or you do as you're told. I assume second way is not an option to you, so go read on that topic and pay special attention to WebLimiterDelay which is a general limiter that applies to all web requests.
There is no "golden rule" that works for everybody, because blocks are heavily influenced by third-party factors, that's why you have to experiment yourself and find a value that works for you. You can also ignore what I say and use something like 10000 which is guaranteed to work correctly, but then don't complain how your ASF reacts to everything in 10 seconds and how badge parsing takes 5 minutes. In addition to that, it's entirely possible that no limiter will do anything because you have so huge amount of bots that you're hitting hard limit that was mentioned above. Yes, it's entirely possible that you'll be able to log in without issues into Steam network (client), but Steam web (website) will refuse to listen to you if you have 100 sessions established at once. ASF requires both Steam network and Steam web to be cooperative, it takes just one down to make you issues you won't recover from.
If nothing helps and you have no clue what is broken, you can always enable Debug mode and see yourself in ASF log why exactly requests are failing. Bijvoorbeeld:
InternalRequest() HEAD https://steamcommunity.com/my/edit/settings
InternalRequest() Forbidden <- HEAD https://steamcommunity.com/my/edit/settings
See that Forbidden code? This means that you got temporarily banned for excessive amount of requests, because you didn't tweak WebLimiterDelay properly yet (assuming you get the same error code for all other requests as well). There could be other reasons listed there, such as InternalServerError, ServiceUnavailable and timeouts that indicate Steam maintenance/issues. You can always try to visit the link mentioned by ASF yourself and check if it works - if it doesn't, then you know why ASF can't access that either. If it does, and the same error doesn't go away after a day or two, it may be worth investigating and reporting.
Before doing that you should make sure that the error is worth reporting in the first place. If it's mentioned in this FAQ, such as trading-related issue, then that's out. If it's temporary issue that happened once or twice, especially when your network was unstable or Steam was down - that's out. However, if you were able to reproduce your issue several times in a row, across 2 days, restarted ASF as well as your machine in the process and made sure that there is no FAQ entry here to help resolve it, then this may be worth asking about.
You're most likely using Windows and your console has QuickEdit mode enabled. Refer to this question on StackOverflow for technical explanation. You should disable QuickEdit mode by right clicking your ASF console window, opening properties, and unchecking appropriate checkbox.
Obvious thing first - new accounts start as limited. Until you unlock account by loading its wallet or spending $5 in the store, ASF can't accept neither send trades using this account. In this case, ASF will state that inventory seems empty, because every card that is in it is non-tradable. It also won't be possible to receive any trade, as that part requires ASF to be able to fetch API key, and API key functionality is disabled for limited accounts. In short - trading is off for all limited accounts, no exceptions.
Next, if you do not use ASF 2FA, it's possible that ASF in fact accepted/sent trade, but you need to confirm it via your e-mail. Likewise, if you use classic 2FA, you need to confirm the trade via your authenticator. Confirmations are mandatory now, so if you don't want to accept them by yourself, consider importing your authenticator into ASF 2FA.
Also notice that you can trade only with your friends, and people with known trade link. If you're trying to initiate Bot -> Master trade, such as loot, then you need to either have your bot on your friendlist, or your SteamTradeToken declared in Bot's config. Make sure that the token is valid - otherwise, you won't be able to send a trade.
Lastly, remember that new devices have 7-days trade lock, so if you've just added your account to ASF, wait at least 7 days - everything should work after that period. That limitation includes both accepting and sending trades. It does not always trigger, and there are people who can send and accept trades instantly. Majority of the people are affected though, and the lock will happen, even if you can send and accept trades through your steam client on the same machine. Just wait patiently, there's nothing you can do to make it faster. Likewise, you may get similar lock for removing/changing various Steam security-related settings, such as 2FA, SteamGuard, password, e-mail and likewise. In general, check if you can send a trade from that account yourself, if yes, very likely it's classic 7-days lock from new device.
And finally, keep in mind that one account can have only 5 pending trades to another one, so ASF will fail to send trades if you have 5 (or more) pending ones from that one bot to accept already. This is rarely a problem, but it's also worth mentioning, especially if you set ASF to auto-send trades, yet you're not using ASF 2FA and forgot to actually confirm them.
If nothing helped, you can always enable Debug mode and check yourself why requests are failing. Please note that Steam talks nonsense most of the time, and provided reason may not make any logical sense, or can be even entirely incorrect - if you decide to interpret that reason, make sure you have decent knowledge about Steam and its quirks. It's also quite common to see that issue with no logical reason, and the only suggested solution in this case is to re-add account to ASF (and wait 7 days again). Sometimes this issue also fixes itself magically, the same way it breaks. However, usually it's just either 7-days trade lock, temporary steam problem, or both. It's best to give it a few days before manually checking what is wrong, unless you have some urge to debug the real cause (and usually you'll be forced to wait anyway, because error message won't make any sense, neither help you in the slightest).
In any case, ASF can only try to send a proper request to Steam in order to accept/send trade. Whether Steam accepts that request, or not, is out of the scope of ASF, and ASF will not magically make it work. There's no bug related to that feature, and there is also nothing to improve, because logic is happening outside of ASF. Therefore, do not ask for fixing stuff that is not broken, and also do not ask why ASF can't accept or send trades - I don't know, and ASF doesn't know either. Either deal with it, or fix yourself, if you know better.
ASF uses login keys (if you kept UseLoginKeys enabled) for keeping credentials valid, the same mechanism that Steam uses - 2FA/SteamGuard token is required only once. However, due to Steam network issues and quirks, it's entirely possible that login key is not saved in the network, I've already seen such issues not only with ASF, but with regular steam client as well (a need to input login + password on each run, regardless of "remember me" option).
You could remove BotName.db and BotName.bin (if available) of affected account and try to link ASF to your account once again, but that doesn't have to succeed. The real ASF-based solution is to import your authenticator as ASF 2FA - this way ASF can generate tokens automatically when they're needed, and you don't have to input them manually. Usually the issue magically solves itself after some time, so you can simply wait for that to happen. Of course you can also ask Valve for solution, because I can't force Steam network to accept our login keys.
As a side note, you can also turn off login keys with UseLoginKeys config property set to false, but this will not solve the problem, only skip the initial login key failure. ASF is already aware of the issue explained here and will try its best to not use login keys if it can guarantee itself all login credentials, so there is no need to tweak UseLoginKeys manually if you can provide all login details together with using ASF 2FA.
This error can mean a lot of things, some of them include:
- Invalid Login/Password combination (obviously)
- Expired login key used by ASF for logging in
- Too many failed login attempts in short period of time (anti-bruteforce)
- Too many login attempts in short period of time (rate-limiting)
- Requirement of captcha to log in (very likely to be caused by two reasons above)
- Any other reason Steam Network may have preventing you from logging in.
In case of anti-bruteforce and rate-limiting, problem will disappear after some time, so just wait and don't attempt to log in in the meantime. If you hit that issue frequently, perhaps it's wise to increase LoginLimiterDelay config property of ASF. Excessive program restarts and other intentional/non-intentional login requests definitely won't help with that issue, so try to avoid it if possible.
In case of expired login key - ASF will remove old one and ask for new one on next login (which will require from you putting 2FA token if your account is 2FA-protected. If your account is using ASF 2FA, token will be generated and used automatically). This can naturally happen over time, but if you get this issue on each login, it's possible that Steam for some reason decided to ignore our login key save requests, as mentioned in the issue above. You can of course disable UseLoginKeys entirely, but that won't solve the issue, only avoid a need of removing expired login keys each time. The real solution, as per the issue above, is to use ASF 2FA.
And lastly, if you used wrong login + password combination, obviously you need to correct this, or disable bot that is attempting to connect using those credentials. ASF can't guess on its own whether InvalidPassword means invalid credentials, or any of the reasons listed above, therefore it'll keep trying until it succeeds.
Keep in mind that ASF has its own built-in system to react accordingly to steam quirks, eventually it will connect and resume its job, therefore it's not required to do anything if the issue is temporary. Restarting ASF in order to magically fix problems will only make things worse (as new ASF won't know previous ASF state of not being able to log in, and try to connect instead of waiting), so avoid doing that unless you know what you're doing.
Finally, as with every Steam request - ASF can only try to log in, using your provided credentials. Whether that request will succeed or not is out of the scope and logic of ASF - there is no bug, and nothing can be fixed neither improved in this regard.
If this error happened during ASF input (e.g. you can see Console.ReadLine() in the stacktrace) then it's caused by your environment which prohibits ASF from reading standard input of your console. That can occur due to a lot of reasons, but the most common one is you running ASF in the wrong environment (e.g. in nohup or & background instead of screen on Linux). If ASF can't access its standard input, then you'll see this error logged and ASF's inability to use your details during runtime.
If you expect this to happen, so you intend to run ASF in input-less environment, then you should explicitly tell ASF that it's the case, by setting Headless mode appropriately. This will tell ASF to never ask for user input under any circumstance, allowing you to run ASF in input-less environments safely.
This error happens when ASF can't establish secure connection with given server, almost exclusively because of SSL certificate mistrust.
In almost all cases this error is caused by wrong date/time on your machine. Every SSL certificate has issued date and expiry date. If your date is invalid and out of those two bounds then the certificate can't be trusted due to a potential MITM attack and ASF refuses to make a connection.
Obvious solution is to set the date on your machine appropriately. It's highly recommended to use automatic date synchronization, such as native synchronization available on Windows, or ntpd on Linux.
If you made sure that the date on your machine is appropriate and the error doesn't want to go away, SSL certificates that your system trusts could be out-of-date or invalid. In this case you should ensure that your machine can establish secure connections, for example by checking if you can access https://github.com with any browser of your choice, or CLI tool such as curl. If you confirmed that this works properly, feel free to post issue on our Steam group.
This warning means that Steam did not answer to ASF request in given time. Usually it's caused by Steam networking hiccups and does not affect ASF in any way. In other cases it's the same as request failing after 5 tries. Reporting this issue makes no sense most of the time, as we can't force Steam to respond to our requests.
This problem is almost exclusively caused by disabled/stopped CNG Key Isolation Windows service, which provides core cryptography functionality for ASF, without which the program isn't able to run. You can fix this issue by launching services.msc and ensuring that CNG Key Isolation Windows service doesn't have disabled startup and is currently running.
Ensure that you downloaded ASF from trusted source. The only official and trusted source is ASF releases page on GitHub (and this is also the source for ASF auto-updates) - any other source is untrusted by definition and can contain malware added by other people - you should not trust any other download location by definition, and ensure that your ASF always comes from us.
If you confirmed that ASF is downloaded from trusted source, then very likely it's simply a false positive. This happened in the past, is happening right now, and will happen in the future. If you're worried about actual safety when using ASF, then I suggest scanning ASF with many different AVs for actual detection ratio, for example through VirusTotal (or any other web service of your choice like this).
If the AV that you're using falsely detects ASF as a malware, then it's a good idea to send this file sample back to developers of your AV, so they can analyze it and improve their detection engine, as clearly it's not working as good as you think it does. There is no issue in ASF code, and there is also nothing to fix for us, since we're not distributing malware in the first place, therefore it doesn't make any sense to report those false-positives to us. We highly recommend to send ASF sample for further analysis like stated above, but if you don't want to bother with it, then you can always add ASF to some kind of AV exceptions, disable your AV or simply use another one. Sadly, we're used to AVs being stupid, as every once in a while some AV detects ASF as a virus, which usually lasts very short and is being patched up quickly by the devs, but like we pointed out above - it happened, happens and will happen all the time. ASF doesn't include any malicious code, you can review ASF code and even compile from source yourself. We're not hackers to obfuscate ASF code in order to hide from AV heuristics and false positives, so do not expect from us to fix what is not broken - there is no "virus" for us to fix.
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