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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What data is stored in the cookies?
Because depends on this, i will try it, or not.

Thanks :)

10 years ago
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Technically it's same as username & password. You will be able to use it to login to your account (which it needs to do to see stats)

10 years ago
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Thanks.
Is that data encripted at least?

10 years ago
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It's the same data that's sent over the line when you access the site from your browser, sent the same way. (So, no, it's not encrypted) It's only a token that's generated when you log in so you don't have to type your password every time you visit the site.

You can see for yourself what it is when you look at the cookie.

10 years ago
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Also important to note is that you can't recover password or use cookie with client.

10 years ago
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I already idled all of my card drops manually. What do?

10 years ago
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then you don't need this program. unless youre tired of doing it manually, and want to do it automatically in the future.

10 years ago
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Very useful program, this is awesome! I tried doing it manually, but with hundreds of games and hundreds of card drops remaining, the task became so tedious, of switching appids, i gave up on trying...

886 card drops remaining
235 games with drops remaining
13 games eligible for booster packs
Worth Approximately $103.53

Thanks!

10 years ago
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You all must know that you're taking your games at risk when you're using this tool. Steam ToS forbids such 3rd party tools.
I have 550+ games, so I'll use the traditional way to get my remaining cards.

10 years ago
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Negative. You seem to be referring to:

"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."
http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

This software is unrelated to automating "any Subscription Marketplace process".

10 years ago
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Playing the game probably counts as a process. There's little doubt this is a third party tool that Valve is within their rights to ban for. Will they? Probably not. Can they? Not without scanning your computer for it specifically, which they have the ability to do but would be a little bit creepy outside of VAC.

10 years ago
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None of that is related to "any Subscription Marketplace process", which this entire section being a reference to marketplace bots, not idling for cards or anything else.

10 years ago
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  • you get the cards you have paid for by purchasing the game, can't see anything wrong with that
10 years ago
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You. I like you.

10 years ago
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thanks!

10 years ago
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Thank you so much, it works perfectly, i have 37 games from where i can collect trading cards, i collected in ~5 hours 13 cards, 10x.
For users who don't have chrome download a cookie addon for your browser to see your sessionID

10 years ago
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Idea seems cool, but I'm paranoid.

10 years ago
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Idk I used Sam forever and never had an issue, this is really similar, just a bit nicer for idling cards.

10 years ago
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Using this now on my rather small list of free games I have no intention of playing. Thank you for the free money!

10 years ago
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Man I wish I had this at summer sale....thanks!

10 years ago
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Please put blacklist for ALL VAC enabled games. Or provide a default blacklist that can be disabled.

Just to be safe.

10 years ago
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I though that only activated when in a server? I could be mistaken? Only time I ever heard of anyone getting VAC banned was when they had SAM running while in a multiplayer server.

10 years ago
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That's not how VAC works. You're not joining any servers via SAM or IM.

10 years ago
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+1

10 years ago
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This

10 years ago
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Either you didn't set up settings.txt correctly or you actually have no game left with any card to drop.

10 years ago
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i sure everything i do correctly xD

10 years ago
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Make sure you're logged in from your browser before you run it. I had the same issue earlier today after logging on Steam from work. It invalidated my session at home. Once I logged back in at home, the process was able to work it's magic once again.

10 years ago
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Thank you... I had 38 games with unredeemed cards :) Just gonna leave this running for the night, thank you again lel

10 years ago
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Works like a charm, thanks a lot

10 years ago
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How do you choose what game you want to idle?

10 years ago
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You don't. It automatically idles all your games with cards left one after the other.

10 years ago
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If i lived in the same country as you, I'd buy you a beer! :D

10 years ago
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Seems like I'm the only one who got this problem :/

http://puu.sh/aEf8n/5eeb9e6871.png
, I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate, 32-bit

10 years ago
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Replace start.exe with this one.
Or wait till dev compiles it himself for x86 systems.

10 years ago
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using only steam-idle.exe with parameter, works fine, thank you!

10 years ago
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How exactly do you use the blacklist? It's been idling the same game for almost 24 hours without any drops.

10 years ago
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I set this up earlier and after receiving all the card drops from the first game and opening the second, the first game failed to close and a second "You're Now In-Game" window was opened. Screenshot.

Don't know if it was just for that one game or if this will happen every time. For the record, I am using the 32-bit .exe found here.

Lastly, a big hearty "thanks" if we can get this fully up and operational. :)

Edit: It took a while to get all the Awesomenauts drops, but this behaviour was repeated (with the same "taskkill.exe is not recognised..." message) upon receiving the last card.

10 years ago
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Do you, by any chance, have XP Home? It seems taskkill was only part of XP Pro and higher. (And included with all version of Windows since Vista)

10 years ago
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I am indeed on XP Home but after a bit (a couple of hours worth) of playing around I do believe I've found a workaround - I simply had to a) download and b) place taskkill.exe and tasklist.exe in my C:WINDOWS\system32 folder. Now to cross my fingers and hope for the best!

Thank you for the information, it was most helpful. :)

10 years ago
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Awesome!
I tried it, and it got me 2 cards in about 20 minutes.. :)
Recommended.

10 years ago
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Cheaters go home

10 years ago
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/facepalm

10 years ago
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Thanks to you I now know a quick way of finding the appname by appID! :)

10 years ago
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Does it work for Windows XP?

10 years ago
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I'm using it on Windows XP right now but with one issue (see my post on page 2 of this thread).

10 years ago
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It worked!!! You saved my life buddy.

10 years ago
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You're welcome. :)

Do say if you have the same issue as me. The drop rate for cards gets drastically reduced if you have more than one game open at once so it's not really feasible for me to leave this running all night long as I'd end up with multiple games all running at the same time.

10 years ago
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Yes Fandango, when I woke up this morning I saw three in-game windows and just few cards traded, it reduced the mining rate.

It's a pain in the ass...I hope the developer can fix it, I'm in to help him if he wants to.

10 years ago
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This worked for me:

1) Download DLL Suite from here
2) Install and run DLL Suite
3) Click the DLLPEDIA button on the sidebar
4) Search for taskkill.exe
5) Locate "taskkill.exe- Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3" and click the "Learn More" link (I have no idea if the others will or won't work but that was the one I went for and haven't had any problems with... yet)
6) Follow the steps listed
7) Go back to step 4 and do the same for tasklist.exe

Seems to be working ok now! I did run into one issue overnight but that had nothing to do with multiple windows and may be totally unrelated.

10 years ago
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Couple of questions:

  1. Are my friends going to see me "in-game" for every game it cycles?

  2. Is my time in the game going to be tracked by Steam and thus added to my "time played"?

10 years ago
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Yes for both questions.

10 years ago
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Damn, that sucks. Oh well. Thanks for the answers.

10 years ago
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