Key resellers and what they mean for you.

CommunityĬlick here to read the subreddit rules before posting. Social experiments rarely go as planned just ask those folks at Stanford.Get your Steam Profile Flair Steam Status Whether this promotes Valve’s long term social goal of connecting Steam users in communities outside of games is another matter, but don’t hold it against them. You can use these card-drop windfalls to complete sets and drive up the value or just your own satisfaction, a lot like any collectable card game. Use the right software carefully with a large game library and in short order your inventory will be stuffed with more new cards than you know what to do with. However, if you do enjoy the metagaming aspect as it stands and engage with an active community that shares this interest, the answer is different. An actual, playable social game using these cards would be helpful here, raising both the value and the utility of collecting them. The rewards and mechanics as they currently stand aren’t enough enticement. If you don’t have even a passing interest in this, then knowing how to game the system more effectively isn’t likely to change your mind. While the risk of lost credentials or VAC banning is small with the right tools, are these utilities worth that extra risk? The answer comes down to how you feel about collecting Steam cards and how you plan your approach to the hobby. While there have been few problems with the right tools, proceed at your own risk.

Idle Master, in comparison, no longer appears to be supported. It also gets more updates and support to its open source code, so it’s the pick of the two and more popular with the Steam card community these days.

Archi Steam Farm doesn’t require the Steam client running to be active, and supports multiple accounts. If the idea of a VAC ban unnerves you, Archi Steam Farm (ASF) avoids Steam Idle Master’s occasional VAC issues by using a different mechanism to trigger card drops. Steam Idle Master documentation and FAQs warn of VAC errors if you run the utility along with a secured game simultaneously, so make sure you close out of it and then exit Steam completely before reopening Steam and playing any games protected by SteamGuard.

It’s not clear what Valve thinks of this practice, but people have been using Steam idle utilities for years with few issues. Which should you use? We'll lay out the details below, but we recommend Archi Steam Farm for your card collecting needs.

Steam idle master steam group