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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9 years ago
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+1 :(

9 years ago
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+3

9 years ago
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Sorting by most value? How did you do that?

9 years ago
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By reading the documentation :D
sort="mostvalue"

9 years ago
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Not everybody know english, or computing...

9 years ago
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Sorry for a stupid question, but where can one find the documentation (where one can read about settings and parameters)

9 years ago
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9 years ago
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9 years ago
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+1

9 years ago
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Sorry about that, our API servers (that IM gets this information from) went on the fritz this morning but it should be working again now. I'll look into updating the program so that if this happens again it'll just default to idling them in order.

9 years ago
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9 years ago
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Getting card values takes forever, 30 mins past still waiting. Why it is not multi threaded and not shows progress. I'm not even sure is it ever gonna finish.

9 years ago
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Playing multiple games at the same time reduces the drop rate. A friend of mine tested 8 games in parallel for 20 hours: 7 cards dropped.

9 years ago
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What playing multiple games to do with my problem?

9 years ago
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Ooops! I'm sorry..
I red "Getting card takes forever, 30 mins past still waiting."

9 years ago
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hey, i have a question. does the cards idling process add playtime to the games at my steamprofile? :)

9 years ago
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certainly :)

9 years ago
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ok, thanks for the info

9 years ago
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With card values being so high right now, its a good time to do this!

9 years ago
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9 years ago
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It tends to stop working when there's too much traffic and it can't pull the card values in a timely fashion.

9 years ago
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Thanks bro its worked. Mastermind +1

9 years ago
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Thanks! It works.

9 years ago
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340 odd games with cards remaining, ill be long dead before i get them all :)

9 years ago
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That's a great example of why this program is brilliant. You can work your way through hundreds of cards simply by leaving your computer on and doing something else.

9 years ago
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Whenever I am present at my computer and doing something off of Steam, Idle Master works great. Sometimes, It'll even work overnight while I sleep. Very rarely does it NOT get the error I mention below.

Other times, like when I go to work and leave it on, it'll finish a game, close it, then say "Error getting card drop information". Sometimes It'll do this in the middle of idling a game.

How do I fix this?

9 years ago
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after working very smoothly for about a weeek, this morning i started it and i gave me an error, i never touched anything in the settings.
i tried re-doing the whole set up process but nothign changed...
can someone help me out?

Screen

9 years ago
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Put that ID to the blacklist.

9 years ago
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tried, it starts next game, same error

9 years ago
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Delete steamcommunity.com cookies and restart browser.. log in again... go to cookies... put the new content to the settings.txt and try again :)

9 years ago
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done, nothing changed

9 years ago
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omg i found out.... it was my stupid antivirus that updated and forgot all the exception i had choosen facepalm

thanks anyway

9 years ago
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Is this a good time to sell the cards? Will the value go down after the sale or something? ^_^

9 years ago
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I'm wondering that too now. It not look like card values decreased or increased in this sales.

9 years ago
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The program works for only 4 days
I have same problem too: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14076298/ShareX/2014/12/start_fa5Asf7wdt.png

jshackles solution possible

Thank you very much On this program ))

9 years ago
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Version 0.7 has been released, you can get it from the program's new website, http://www.steamidlemaster.com.

9 years ago
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thanks sexy man

9 years ago
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9 years ago
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Yeah, sorry, but I won't use the new version. Gonna keep the old version runnin'.

9 years ago
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Well, that should eliminate the problem with browser cookies; Idle Master now gets its own cookie.

9 years ago
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That's the only way for the app to be logged in your account to see what game still has drop, without the messing with the cookie in the config file.

9 years ago
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+

9 years ago
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9 years ago
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Needs portable ZIP distro.

9 years ago
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its great app, help others to farming the cards,
but, please keep the old version in the download area,
some of us just want a plain-dos-like idle-master, or at least keep it in github as old branch or whatever

9 years ago
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My Idle Master just stopped opening the window saying your in-game, meaning it wont work. I do not have the new version.

9 years ago
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Same happened with me, try to start it as administrator, it worked for me.

9 years ago
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Didn't work :/

9 years ago
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Do you get an error opening steam-idle? If so, it might be your antivirus that's blocking the program.

9 years ago
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http://i.gyazo.com/7738dd80e72654d02c188220bfd7c886.png

It opens like normal, has since I've started using it a month or so ago, and I haven't had any issues until the other day when it stopped opening the second window that displays the game graphic and says "You're now in game". Everything works like normal, except for that. And since that isn't working, Steam isn't showing me in-game and I am not getting card drops. And I've noticed each time I open it, it starts a different game.
I have reinstalled twice, reset my cookie data a few times, restarted Steam and my PC a few times.....nothing changes.

9 years ago
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Have you tried the new version? Maybe it would work better since it doesn't rely on opening a 2nd window anymore.

9 years ago
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Error when installing the new version: http://i.gyazo.com/8fd9d962ddc97a5a8d6430c163b49b95.png

9 years ago
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Interesting program. Since I have to play Steam games offline most of the time (due to a lack of internet out in the country), this looks like it'd help me get cards for games I've since erased from my laptop or don't feel like playing again just for cards. I'll have to get this and try it the next time I go to the library or something. Kudos, jshackles.

9 years ago
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what difference in "Start" and "Steamidle"?

and i like this program alot - i have atm only german lte till summer and this mean i have only 38kb download. This tool is a big help for me.

9 years ago
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38KB with LTE? Something went really really wrong there then. :P I got LTE as well (from Telekom) and, before I hit the 45GB per month, I get up to 3MB/s.

9 years ago
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its 15gb with 21mbit and after this limited to 38kb for rest of the month

and 15gb with 21mbit is gone in 1-2 hours - so yeah complete month 38kb only for LTE Home from Vodafone

9 years ago
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Ah, well if you use up those 15GB in 1-2 hours, that really sucks, haha. But yeah, I'm no real fan of the "Drossel" either.

9 years ago
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great program now time to chase those 100+ cards

9 years ago
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cant be installed on win7 ultimate x64. always error message. looks like a great program, going to wait for next version.

9 years ago
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Run the setup as Admin. I've installed it with np

9 years ago
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still wont work. "The application is improperly formatted." error message. tried downloading using different pc, also the same.

9 years ago
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Been using this the last several days. Works like a charm. Thanks!

9 years ago
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Thank you, this is good. So I don't have install and play in background all the games I have only for cards

9 years ago
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Will this work on Windows XP?

9 years ago
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It was working great but now when the timer gets to 0 it will not restat the clock, any suggestions?

9 years ago
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I love this program. But I have a question- We seem to be unable to switch accounts. I click sign out, then sign in, but the window that pops up is still signed in and automatically (very quickly) signs me back into the wrong one before I can log out. Is there a way I can fix this so we can idle by turns on the same computer? Thanks :)

9 years ago
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just open you browser and logout from steam, but notice that the program uses the Internet Explorer (at least here), so it may not be your main browser that you have to logout from.

9 years ago
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Thanks, I had tried that. On IE I wasn't logged in, and on Chrome I logged out and still got the same problem (and I only have those two); but I tried it again tonight after a restart and some cookie cleansing and it finally let me switch. Dunno what the hiccup was about, but it seems to be fixed now. Thanks again. :)

9 years ago
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Gave up on this, still will not work.

9 years ago
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Same. :(

I am using the python version.

9 years ago
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Donated 1U$ for you.
I've already used this tons of hours and I'm still using from time to time, thank you very much.

9 years ago
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