How many steam keys are possible?

Did you calculate that only with the common 15 character long ones or also taking into account the rarer longer variants?
Just curious.

keys can be revoked so you can't say that they're safe...

36^15

I get a different result: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=36^15

Yeah, if there was ever a risk of them running low on combinations, they'd just lengthen the string.

It's like when they were running out of phone numbers here. It used to be 5 digits plus area code. They added an extra 2 numbers after the area code that act as a sort of sub-area code. Problem fixed.

i was only just thinking about this last night... weird :)

With a standard 15 character Steam key, I'm assuming each character can be any letter from A-Z and any number from 0-9. So the number of combinations is 36^15.

I wasn't worried, but did wonder how many combinations are possible... nice to know we're still far from the limit :)
So wait, how much is 2.2107392e+23 actually? 221,073,919,720,733,000,000,000!

AREPH-RASEK-EYSOK?

Legitimate question: Does anyone know if certain keys (say, those with vulgar words) blacklisted?

To avoid confusion some omit letter O and number 0 is used instead. Not entirely sure steam also did this. If true, then 35^15. Still plenty of combinations,

Afk, so can't check myself, but do steam keys use the full 0-9A-Z set, or are O/0 (and others?) unused to prevent mistakes with printed keys. I know some key sets of the past would eliminate l/I as well, or rather... it would accept either character there for that key.

Edit: ninjad! :)

Edit 2: 9/g was also a common exception for printed keys

In addition to the standard format (3*5 chars) there are also keys with 5*5 chars, and also keys with 18 chars and no dashes (like DALDBT3BGGWHAxxxxx),

Not every combination is used, otherwise you would be able to change one letter/number and have a new key.

Now if we get more theoretical there are many checksumms(calculations) involved which limits that number probabliy heavily but if its ^14 or maybe even just ^9. The number is massive.

But this does mean if I somehow hit the jackpot I can activate a random game, right? No matter how low the probability is.

Ok so if steam got to 100 000 different games, there'd be enough keys for 937 958 785 518 736 439 people to own all the games. Or 117 million times more than the current world population. Even with the other caveats that change the number of possibilities, I don't think this format will ever need to change and I don't think you'll ever randomly guess a key.

good element to show that virtual games aren't actually worth any shit and that the initial cost of production isn't an excuse for the revenues when they become much greater than it. and don't get me started on the bs dlc and microtransactions. oh here let me type "10 000" on my keyboard. here, $100 000 please. oh wait, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, $100 000 again please thanks. oh you know what just let me put that shit item that took 5 minutes to make as an exclusive and sell it ad infinitum automatically, cause it's duplicated at the cost of a byte at most, for 5€, no let's say 10€, while i sit there watching my bank account increase from those people actually having to work to receive money cause their efforts aren't duplicated automatically at no cost unlike me

The real worry is not about the number of keys but Steam going out of business. I remember a report that predicts IT companies that will still be there for the next century and Steam was not one of them but facebook was . . . I do not know if its a gimmick. Personally, I do not even use fb and stayed away from it most of the time. If there's a risk of running out of keys then they'll just add in another 5 letter/number combi. Pretty much when phone numbers reach a limit and extended by 1 number in the end. Cheers~

There is nothing impossible, still get from to time the dublicate error when I try to use the unused key.

That would be a looooooong train ;)

It seems that O and 1 is not used in steam keys.

Actually not the case, I looked through my key list and found very select few using these even if extremely rare compared to other letters.