I created an application that automatically idles your Steam games to extract all of your available Steam Trading Cards. The application automatically finds the games you have drops remaining in, and idles those games one by one until all of your trading cards are in your inventory. This way, you can start up the program and go to sleep / work / away and come back to an inventory full of cards.

Website
Source Code
Official Group

Installation Instructions

Go to the Official Site, download and run the setup.exe file there. The program should launch automatically when the installation is complete. Make sure Steam is open and you're logged in. To start idling, you'll need to click the (Sign In) button and sign in to Steam. Once that's done you should be "in-game" on Steam and the program will indicate as such. Now go watch TV, go to bed, or go on vacation. When you come back to your computer, you should have a pile of Trading Cards in your inventory.

Some FAQ

How does this work?

First of all, the program will determine which of your games still have card drops remaining. It will go through each application and simulate you being “in-game” so that cards will drop. It will check periodically to see if the game you’re idling has card drops remaining. When only one drop remains, it will start checking more frequently. When the game you’re idling has no more cards, it’ll move on to the next game. When no more cards are available, the program will exit.

Do I need to download a game in order for this program to get it's trading cards?

No.

Do I need to be logged in to Steam for Idle Master to work?

Yes, Steam needs to be running and you must be logged in.

Can I play a game while this is running?

It’s possible, but doing so may significantly reduce your card drop rate. For best results, exit this program before playing a game.

How do I close the application?

Simply click the red X on the application.

Is this safe?

Presumably so, yes. The program that simulates you being in-game is no different than other popular methods like using Steam Achievement Manager or "the AppID trick".

Why do I need to sign in to Steam from the application?

When you visit your badges page on Steam, it will show you how many card drops you have remaining in each game. When another user looks at your badges page, they can only see the badges you've completed. By signing in, this allows Idle Master to connect to Steam properly and gives it access to this information that only you can see.

Why should I trust this?

The entire project is open source, which includes the source code for all binaries.

Troubleshooting

Idle Master looks like it's working, but I'm not getting any Steam Trading Cards.

First of all, be patient. Idle Master doesn't make them drop any faster than they normally would if you were playing the game, and each game has a different drop rate. Another thing to check is that your Steam profile correctly shows that you're "In-Game". If Steam doesn't think you're "In-Game", it means something is wrong with your configuration.

10 years ago*

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Thank you,works great! <3

9 years ago
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IM is working great but I have an issue with the login: every time I open it (or at least once a day) I have to do the sign in again, while in the previous versions it was automatic.
Is it the way it is supposed to work or it should save the login credentials?

9 years ago
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No thanks. But thank you.

9 years ago
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Deleted

This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

9 years ago
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i know how to get the cards fastest way, and i want to show you how to do it.
so you can add this trick to your next version of the program. added on steam.

9 years ago
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Tell all of us :3

9 years ago
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i want to tell this guy first. sorry.

edit: i changed my mind and opened a topic for it. i hope it works for you all.
http://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/OxZYh/i-want-to-show-you-how-to-get-your-trading-cards-faster

edit 2: it seems he reject my friend offer, i hope he read my topic about it.

9 years ago*
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It tells me that Steam is not running even though Steam is running. It used to work a few days ago. However I noticed that Steam doesn't start itself automatically anymore when booting. May that be the cause?

9 years ago
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Ad a developer my self http://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/8Dnrz/the-auto-add-free-to-play-thing-is-back-and-in-development I greatly appreciate what you are doing to try and help the community, Thank you. :)

9 years ago
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evading use of bandwidth, fuck yes, been using this for a few months now its great

9 years ago
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Dude, thank you so much for Idle Master. Without it, there's no way I could have gotten all the cards from my games.

9 years ago
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Really awesome program - I cant believe how much bandwidth and disc space I could have saved if I used IM earlier

9 years ago
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Hey jshackles,

Can you create an application to Run a particular game just to increase hours of gameplay.? I mean to ask is there any application already created ??

9 years ago
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Steam Achievement Manager can do that, but I strongly advice against doing that.

9 years ago
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Why?

9 years ago
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Because Valve doesn't like such tools and it's definitely not worth it to even remotely risk a ban or suspension or account limitation for that. Why not just leave the game open and do something else?

9 years ago
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Well, I've been doing it for months and no ban. Valve doesn't allow using 3rd party tools to gain advantage in multiplayer IIRC.

9 years ago
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Sure. But what I don't understand is why one would bother using a despised app like SAM just to idle a game.

9 years ago
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Well, I don't think it is despised and why, well, most of the time when I play games I am offline, and I want Steam to show my playtime.

9 years ago
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I see. I still think it's despised, and rightly so, but we can certainly disagree.

9 years ago
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Can someone help me? I need to remember the name of a webpage or something that calculates the total value and number of trading cards you have on your account, I tried it once, and I want to try it again but I forgot the name...

9 years ago
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9 years ago
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Oh yeah I used this application. it worked awesomely!

9 years ago
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It's a great app, thanks. Any chance you could make it to work without using login/pass?

9 years ago
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No :c

9 years ago
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Unless you can find a way to log in your account without login/pass, of course not.

As an alternative, however, you can now manually add your cookies from your browser in the software, just follow these instructions.

9 years ago*
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SAM does that :)) This is why I'm asking it

9 years ago
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SAM fakes an app running, period.

This, in addition, reads you badges page to know when the cards have dropped and move on to the next game by itself. That information is not available without being logged in your account.

9 years ago
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But it doesn't ask to login , does it?

9 years ago
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No, because it doesn't need to. The faking an app part doesn't need login. It's the "read you bages page" that requires the login. If you were not logged in, there would be no advantage to using this over SAM.

9 years ago
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chill dude. I wasn't asking for a lecture and btw I wasn't asking you.

9 years ago
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I'm just explaining why it needs to login. I'm perfectly chill. :P

9 years ago
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Is this going to get me banned or put a virus on my computer

9 years ago
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nope,it works perfectly, just try to don't play any VAC protected games while idling =\

9 years ago
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The idler thinks I have no cards left to find, yet I look on my badges page and I have quite a lot. This a bug or what?

9 years ago
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Waiting for Idle Master 2.0 Remastered Edition! xD

9 years ago
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Error 404

9 years ago
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See other thread about blacklisting a certain appID so it'll work.

Plus, right now the Badges page is down.

9 years ago
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Hey jshackles, just want to make a suggestion.
Since now there's a 2 hours delay before you start dropping cards you could add the option to idle multiple games in order to reach that limit with more than one game at a time.

9 years ago
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+1

9 years ago
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9 years ago
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Very noice, thanks for the tip

9 years ago
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This works great but after running maybe 5-10 games it stalls out and continuously runs a game even if I already got all the drops from that game. This makes being afk not the best option because I just run up useless hours on a game with no more card drops. Do you guys have any idea what's up and if it can be fixed? Thanks

9 years ago
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I think I'm about to cave in to the fact I won't be able to play all the games in my library, so I might give it a go to this!

9 years ago
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Is there a workaround about the new 2 hours restriction? The only way i can think is launch several instance of idle master, but if i do that no card at all will drop even in a whole day idle!

9 years ago
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Just launch multiple instances > idle games till the 2 hour limit > close all the instances and idle one by one

9 years ago
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that's what i did, but after that with only one instance it takes over 10 hours to drop for each game having over 2 playing hours…

9 years ago
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After you've hit 2 hours of playtime with a game cards start dropping like they did before, idlemaster can't do nothing to speed up that process

9 years ago
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Use the Idle Master Python. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/idlemastery/discussions/0/523890681409043070/
It opens all games below 2 hours and closes them when the 2 hour mark has been hit. After that just open the normal Idle Master like you normally do.

9 years ago
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interesting, i have less than 15 games to idle now and i « played » them for 2 hours by opening bunch of idle master already, so, i'll give it a try next time i got a big batch ^^

9 years ago
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We need an option to run all games with card drops remaining until they hit 2 hours at the same time. Then we can go back to using idle master how we used to.

9 years ago
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9 years ago
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happy cake day n_n

9 years ago
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I see the multiple-idle feature is now included in the main IdleMaster program. Good job, thanks!

9 years ago
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