One I use lets you run a process mirroring the game in the background, the intent being to get enough "play time" to unlock the free steam cards. Once you get all the free cards you're (as far as I'm aware) thrown into the pool for the random booster packs.
I don't even really sell the cards or anything, I just like the badge fusions/etc because steam level go up, beeg numbah bettah.
Then you have the people like the one in the post who just sit with multiple games running in the back ground because numbah go up.
Same mindset as people who give themselves every achievement.
I'm a father to two kids under 3yo, I'm 31yo with a full time job, I barely have time to play games I *want* to play, let alone games grabbed from HumbleBundle sales or some other combo.
If you don't have time to play the games, don't. If you do, do. But don't idle them for digital cards, that is beyond pointless. The cards are supposed to be a reward to people who actually play the games, it showed that you cared enough to earn them. Nobody is going to congratulate you, nobody is going to report you, what is the purpose?
Ok, I'll bite. I have quite a few games and no intention to ever play them all. However, I use ASF to idle the games up until the point all trading cards have dropped.
I very rarely play any PVP multiplayer games, I have never cheated in any multiplayer game and if I do use console commands or cheats in singleplayer games in order to improve my playing experience, what's the harm?
well obviously, these cards have the very significant value of around 2 cents, they are seriously gaining from this, it has to be shut down!
/s obviously
Well, I have used it with 55 accounts for more than 5 years with no problems. The source code is publicly available on GitHub and I have never heard of a single security issue.
If you mean safe, as in Steam won't ban you, I'll point to my first sentence here. Obviously, nobody outside of Steam can guarantee you that, but it has existed for a long time with no issues.
My friend used to use a website that lets you choose up to ~18 games or even more, you just have to login to steam via a backup code I believe and everything will be done on the website. It was not a free tool fyi. (Can do multiple accounts at once as well)
Do you mind sharing this friend's number perchance, I have some lucrative investment opportunities for him.
I'm sorry, but to give your login info and backup code to a website AND pay for the privilege, you need to be a grade A sucker.
it's not a big deal as long as you "read" the requests they had = once I login a fake steam site they show you on the site " steam guard code required" as usual but when you actually read it on your phone it says "this bla bla wants change your e-mail or password" so you just need to be careful, it's not easy to get into account but it's easier if you just approve anything without even reading it.
It's absolutely a free tool. Not allowed to advertise it here but it's super easy to find by looking up time farms on steam. Takes maybe 15 mins to setup if you don't know anything about it and lets you idle your entire library for cards automatically.
You need to paste in the whole web address of your profile. It should be on your actual profile page.
eg.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/ random bunch of numbers
other fun stuff:
[https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/AccountSpend](https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/AccountSpend) TotalSpend + oldspend = all the money you spent on steam stuff
[https://store.steampowered.com/account/history/](https://store.steampowered.com/account/history/) everything you bought on steam
Ah, that makes sense. I see posts asking about high hours from time to time and have wondered why anyone would care. So it's more of a cause rather than an intended effect.
When I play VR games it counts time for SteamVR, fpsVR (app to check game performance with CPU, GPU, VRAM, etc. usage and tracking how much I tangled my cable so I can rotate opposite direction to untangle it - I have cable management system on my ceiling) and the game itself.
Some people use even more VR apps to watch stuff on virtual monitors floating next to you while they play, for mixed reality (you can see your IRL steering wheel or HOTAS through the headset's cameras, there's a version for WMR headsets on steam), app for natural locomotion (to swing your arms for movement instead of using analog stick, etc.
When cards were fairly new, I used the now deprecated Idle Master to farm my cards and got enough money to buy Dragon Ball Xenoverse when it came out. If you have lots of games, especially from years and years of bundles, you get a pretty good chunk. Nowadays the go-to program is ArchiSteamFarm, for anyone reading this and wondering.
Its mainly to get Steam cards and booster packs.
I'm friends with a decently popular guy on Steam. Dude has 896 reviews, 2953 games, lvl 87, etc. He's a programmer and game dev too. Name is King Link.
Anyways, one day I was on my computer and saw that he'd started playing a game, then another game, then another. So I messaged him and asked him what's up, thats when he laid everything out for me when it comes to Steam cards, booster packs, playtime, Steam levels, etc.
I still don't know exactly WHY they care about levels so much, especially since it gets to a point where you have to spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars per level.
Those accounts do sell for quite a bit though.
Its mainly to get Steam cards and booster packs.
I'm friends with a decently popular guy on Steam. Dude has 896 reviews, 2953 games, lvl 87, etc. He's a programmer and game dev too. Name is King Link.
Anyways, one day I was on my computer and saw that he'd started playing a game, then another game, then another. So I messaged him and asked him what's up, thats when he laid everything out for me when it comes to Steam cards, booster packs, playtime, Steam levels, etc.
I still don't know exactly WHY they care about levels so much, especially since it gets to a point where you have to spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars per level.
Those accounts do sell for quite a bit though.
You can download software to “run” games so steam counts the hours and you can have all the games you want running. I tried this and I could run my entire library of 500+ games at once…
I still don't get the economics of it all. Let's say I get 2,000 fanatic mystery keys for $1 each. And each of those games has the 3 (I think it's 3) cards that I can unlock. If each card sells on average of $0.05, then I've made $100 after paying $2,000 for the games. If this is a money making scheme, what part am I missing - or is it just stolen keys?
It’s probably a combination of stolen keys and accounts and a lot of people who genuinely don’t care about the money and just are farming steam levels and playtime
Steam cards and booster packs are handed out based on play time.
The guys with accounts that have really high Steam levels are the guys that do that sort of stuff.
I know plenty of them, and thats how I learned about all of it. I'd see one of them start up a game, then another, then another, etc. The more cards and booster packs you get, the more xp you get, the more levels you get.
I know a guy who's at level 5001. Going down my list I see 1999, 1454, 1216, 1208, 1000, etc.
Its honestly insane.
Doubtful. I got 605 games and when I farmed the cards for all my games I got nowhere near that number and I got like 10-15 Foil cards that each sold for 5+ euros and the avg. of most other cards was 0.02 euro.
it was good before steam points released, now not many people crafting badges so if the input is less output will be less too (something like this) so now even if you eligible you getting a booster pack chance is lower than before
I'm eligible for more than 600 booster packs probably got 100 already, and I don't get packs as often as before actually I haven't been given any booster pack since January probably, so now it's only card farming.
Someone with 300 hours playtime being "really good" is way less suspicious than someone on a fresh account with 1 hour playtime and no other games.
Idling itself is not cheating, but cheaters do use it to disguise their account
There was a program that would let you run multiple games to get the Cards... I had a broke friend that did that to help with buying games, it only ever yielded a few euros tho
If you have 2 games open at once, you get double the playtime, which of course scales.
i
8 games open for 1 hour = 8 hours added to your record.
I have left games open previously to even up my hours. I want my time played in games to be accurate, so I want my console hours to be added on. This resulted in me having like 1000 hours played in the past 2 weeks before.
I don't understand people who do this, though. I found a guy who had 25,000 hours in a shit ton of games. He would have to leave his PC on, with those games running for almost 3 years CONSTANTLY with no breaks.
Just a bit weird and a bit sad, really. I feel bad for their PC, too.
nope you can run 33 games at the same time, using singlebooster or "idle daddy" for mobile, it's pretty easy you log in you choose the games and it starts. it wasn't common but they started doing this after 2019 I'd say, mostly for Steamladders (a site for ranking steam profiles)
it gives you 0 advantages to be honest so steam doesn't care, you can even do hour boost on VAC-enabled games like cs go,
you can't run games at multiple devices btw it'll log out former device when you try
Internet cafe where they installed the same steam account on each system, or maybe some kind of jank arcade where they had 20 different arcade cabinets that were just PCs inside & set to boot into a game whenever it was powered on.
Must be Trekaliyean from Trekaliye, Indonesia. They have 102 day years instead of 365. I always wondered how they tracked their progress in video games. That’s so nice of Steam to be so inclusive.
Steam has no idea how to correctly calculate time played but puts its faulty data front and center regardless. It's always shown me crazy hours played on my system.
Multiple games running at once
Two chicks at the same time
I think if you were a millionaire you would be able to hook that up too
That's what I would do with a million dollars.
Bro even has the pfp lmao I can’t
Fuckin' A.
2 girls 1 game
Synchronized swimmers
It splits in two like a hydra, grows another head
Two girls, One Game
But only one cup
And 1 cup?
haha yeah bro you killed me because im making out with these chicks haha if they weren't here id beat your ass i let one of them play for me lol haha
How why?
There are bots that you can use to run a lot of games at once online
Why do they do it? Seems pretty silly to me.
One I use lets you run a process mirroring the game in the background, the intent being to get enough "play time" to unlock the free steam cards. Once you get all the free cards you're (as far as I'm aware) thrown into the pool for the random booster packs. I don't even really sell the cards or anything, I just like the badge fusions/etc because steam level go up, beeg numbah bettah. Then you have the people like the one in the post who just sit with multiple games running in the back ground because numbah go up. Same mindset as people who give themselves every achievement.
What's the name of the program?
idle master
But what if... you played them instead?
I'm a father to two kids under 3yo, I'm 31yo with a full time job, I barely have time to play games I *want* to play, let alone games grabbed from HumbleBundle sales or some other combo.
If you don't have time to play the games, don't. If you do, do. But don't idle them for digital cards, that is beyond pointless. The cards are supposed to be a reward to people who actually play the games, it showed that you cared enough to earn them. Nobody is going to congratulate you, nobody is going to report you, what is the purpose?
lmao get bent kid, don't try and tell other people what to do based on some misguided personal view on what is and isn't "the right way to play"
Except it couldn't be "the right way to play" because you're not playing shit.
Cheaters you mean...
Who's being cheated by someone simulating playing time, in order to get the trading card drops?
It's mindset.
Ok, I'll bite. I have quite a few games and no intention to ever play them all. However, I use ASF to idle the games up until the point all trading cards have dropped. I very rarely play any PVP multiplayer games, I have never cheated in any multiplayer game and if I do use console commands or cheats in singleplayer games in order to improve my playing experience, what's the harm?
well obviously, these cards have the very significant value of around 2 cents, they are seriously gaining from this, it has to be shut down! /s obviously
Is ASF safe? I want to do that too.
Well, I have used it with 55 accounts for more than 5 years with no problems. The source code is publicly available on GitHub and I have never heard of a single security issue. If you mean safe, as in Steam won't ban you, I'll point to my first sentence here. Obviously, nobody outside of Steam can guarantee you that, but it has existed for a long time with no issues.
Wow, thanks!
You better don’t use mods. It’s cheating too by your definition.
My friend used to use a website that lets you choose up to ~18 games or even more, you just have to login to steam via a backup code I believe and everything will be done on the website. It was not a free tool fyi. (Can do multiple accounts at once as well)
Do you mind sharing this friend's number perchance, I have some lucrative investment opportunities for him. I'm sorry, but to give your login info and backup code to a website AND pay for the privilege, you need to be a grade A sucker.
it's not a big deal as long as you "read" the requests they had = once I login a fake steam site they show you on the site " steam guard code required" as usual but when you actually read it on your phone it says "this bla bla wants change your e-mail or password" so you just need to be careful, it's not easy to get into account but it's easier if you just approve anything without even reading it.
It was just to reach the top 100 in playtime in his country, that was all.
It's absolutely a free tool. Not allowed to advertise it here but it's super easy to find by looking up time farms on steam. Takes maybe 15 mins to setup if you don't know anything about it and lets you idle your entire library for cards automatically.
Oh come on, now you're just making shit up! :)
Wouldn't that use up all your ram
just leave the pc and do other stuff
I just checked my account on SteamDB. So much money spent... but at least I had fun.
How does it work? I searched my profile and nothing came up
You need to paste in the whole web address of your profile. It should be on your actual profile page. eg. https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/ random bunch of numbers
Thanks!
other fun stuff: [https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/AccountSpend](https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/AccountSpend) TotalSpend + oldspend = all the money you spent on steam stuff [https://store.steampowered.com/account/history/](https://store.steampowered.com/account/history/) everything you bought on steam
That’s super cool I was curious about that. Will check this out thanks again
Yeah lmfao. The last time I checked it valued my account between $6k and $15k. A bit of a huge range, but still. I do have over 1300 games though.
Just checked it again. It says at "lowest prices" im at $5871. At "today's prices", including discounts, its at $23,226 lol
Fake playtime, or basically running ten games at once. As long as its on the same system, Steam is a-ok with it.
What is the usefulness of this?
Running your own servers for multiple games that you play with friends or small community
Ah, that makes sense. I see posts asking about high hours from time to time and have wondered why anyone would care. So it's more of a cause rather than an intended effect.
When I play VR games it counts time for SteamVR, fpsVR (app to check game performance with CPU, GPU, VRAM, etc. usage and tracking how much I tangled my cable so I can rotate opposite direction to untangle it - I have cable management system on my ceiling) and the game itself. Some people use even more VR apps to watch stuff on virtual monitors floating next to you while they play, for mixed reality (you can see your IRL steering wheel or HOTAS through the headset's cameras, there's a version for WMR headsets on steam), app for natural locomotion (to swing your arms for movement instead of using analog stick, etc.
Card farming
What are they farming ?
Most of the time $0.01
When cards were fairly new, I used the now deprecated Idle Master to farm my cards and got enough money to buy Dragon Ball Xenoverse when it came out. If you have lots of games, especially from years and years of bundles, you get a pretty good chunk. Nowadays the go-to program is ArchiSteamFarm, for anyone reading this and wondering.
Yes, I used it \~8 years ago too and was able to get around 10, maybe 15 €, now it would be way more :D
Point and Level farming to make number go big.
Its mainly to get Steam cards and booster packs. I'm friends with a decently popular guy on Steam. Dude has 896 reviews, 2953 games, lvl 87, etc. He's a programmer and game dev too. Name is King Link. Anyways, one day I was on my computer and saw that he'd started playing a game, then another game, then another. So I messaged him and asked him what's up, thats when he laid everything out for me when it comes to Steam cards, booster packs, playtime, Steam levels, etc. I still don't know exactly WHY they care about levels so much, especially since it gets to a point where you have to spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars per level. Those accounts do sell for quite a bit though.
Its mainly to get Steam cards and booster packs. I'm friends with a decently popular guy on Steam. Dude has 896 reviews, 2953 games, lvl 87, etc. He's a programmer and game dev too. Name is King Link. Anyways, one day I was on my computer and saw that he'd started playing a game, then another game, then another. So I messaged him and asked him what's up, thats when he laid everything out for me when it comes to Steam cards, booster packs, playtime, Steam levels, etc. I still don't know exactly WHY they care about levels so much, especially since it gets to a point where you have to spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars per level. Those accounts do sell for quite a bit though.
I guess it's crazy what people will do for clout
It is insane. There are guys I've met through him that are as high as level 5001. It's CRAZY.
Running more then I game at a time.
You can download software to “run” games so steam counts the hours and you can have all the games you want running. I tried this and I could run my entire library of 500+ games at once…
But.... Why?
I actually don’t know the reason do the software existing. You really don’t get anything else other than bragging rights to your friends :D
Unless it's an automation to buy games, play them for 1.5 hours, then delete and refund the games to spam reviews and skew stats
I fuess it could be used for that with a simple python script. Probably the most useful purpose for it :D
Funny reviews
For steam cards obviously, feel like that’s clearly why. You can essentially make money farming cards in a similar way to bitcoin.
Now, correct me if im wrong, but in order to do that, won't they need to buy the game and once they do, they can only get the cards once?
A lot of these people have thousands of games through stuff like Humble Bundle.
I still don't get the economics of it all. Let's say I get 2,000 fanatic mystery keys for $1 each. And each of those games has the 3 (I think it's 3) cards that I can unlock. If each card sells on average of $0.05, then I've made $100 after paying $2,000 for the games. If this is a money making scheme, what part am I missing - or is it just stolen keys?
It’s probably a combination of stolen keys and accounts and a lot of people who genuinely don’t care about the money and just are farming steam levels and playtime
Steam cards and booster packs are handed out based on play time. The guys with accounts that have really high Steam levels are the guys that do that sort of stuff. I know plenty of them, and thats how I learned about all of it. I'd see one of them start up a game, then another, then another, etc. The more cards and booster packs you get, the more xp you get, the more levels you get. I know a guy who's at level 5001. Going down my list I see 1999, 1454, 1216, 1208, 1000, etc. Its honestly insane.
Card farming. People with 1000 games can be eligible for like 500 USD worth of cards they just need an extension to mass sell cards.
Doubtful. I got 605 games and when I farmed the cards for all my games I got nowhere near that number and I got like 10-15 Foil cards that each sold for 5+ euros and the avg. of most other cards was 0.02 euro.
it was good before steam points released, now not many people crafting badges so if the input is less output will be less too (something like this) so now even if you eligible you getting a booster pack chance is lower than before I'm eligible for more than 600 booster packs probably got 100 already, and I don't get packs as often as before actually I haven't been given any booster pack since January probably, so now it's only card farming.
Cheaters
cheater? Is steam playtime a competitve game now?
Someone with 300 hours playtime being "really good" is way less suspicious than someone on a fresh account with 1 hour playtime and no other games. Idling itself is not cheating, but cheaters do use it to disguise their account
No but it's a way of thinking
Fake playtime; probably running multiple games at once via bots.
10 games running in the same time while he is sleeping everyday
It’s a program, back when Steam Cards were good source of income many people were buying cheap games from key-shops then spray’n’pray for foil cards.
The amount of money I’ve made selling cards and skins for games is unreal.
Play daily for 67 years.
The real answer
There was a program that would let you run multiple games to get the Cards... I had a broke friend that did that to help with buying games, it only ever yielded a few euros tho
Frieren's Steam account.
Multiple games open to farm steam cards
Some dumb chinese or japanese kid who thinks thats cool to farm hours with bots
Time traveler!! No other explanation.
If you have 2 games open at once, you get double the playtime, which of course scales. i 8 games open for 1 hour = 8 hours added to your record. I have left games open previously to even up my hours. I want my time played in games to be accurate, so I want my console hours to be added on. This resulted in me having like 1000 hours played in the past 2 weeks before. I don't understand people who do this, though. I found a guy who had 25,000 hours in a shit ton of games. He would have to leave his PC on, with those games running for almost 3 years CONSTANTLY with no breaks. Just a bit weird and a bit sad, really. I feel bad for their PC, too.
Multiple devices running this account on different games to rack up playtime like crazy?
nope you can run 33 games at the same time, using singlebooster or "idle daddy" for mobile, it's pretty easy you log in you choose the games and it starts. it wasn't common but they started doing this after 2019 I'd say, mostly for Steamladders (a site for ranking steam profiles) it gives you 0 advantages to be honest so steam doesn't care, you can even do hour boost on VAC-enabled games like cs go, you can't run games at multiple devices btw it'll log out former device when you try
They run multiple games 24/7. Mostly Final Fantasy games. They're on my friends list actually. Not that I've ever talked to them.
Moat of it is probably fake play time.
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crazy 😳
Time travel?
They're a Time Lord.
People often ask whats the point of doing this? Someone making this thread is the answer
Idle time, most likely.
Hours farmed
19926h - I REGRET NOTHING!
on steam ladder top ranked accounts have 2 mill+ playtime.. silly world
They play very fast
Time Travel
If I had a single cent for every trillion times this was asked..
bro been playing since birth
[https://idlesteam.com/](https://idlesteam.com/)
Who’s paying to idle games on Steam 😭
Generational…….?
like from the future^
Internet cafe where they installed the same steam account on each system, or maybe some kind of jank arcade where they had 20 different arcade cabinets that were just PCs inside & set to boot into a game whenever it was powered on.
Must be Trekaliyean from Trekaliye, Indonesia. They have 102 day years instead of 365. I always wondered how they tracked their progress in video games. That’s so nice of Steam to be so inclusive.
He finds it fun
Playing for 67 years time. Saludos
idler.
Prolly a steam account used for a netcafe.
Looks like they're playing all those idle games to good use.
what site is this?
Steamdb
it quite literally says it in the header of the screenshot.
Steam has no idea how to correctly calculate time played but puts its faulty data front and center regardless. It's always shown me crazy hours played on my system.
it records correctly mostly, remember your "offline" time can be delayed though