So, what'll happen is that new games which show no actual player presence, just idling bots, will not drop cards. It'll make it harder for shitty or fake games to make it onto the market purely for the sake of obtaining cards.

It will make those card-traders who only go out and use free-keys to get cards a little less viable, but those who have legitimate games will be unaffected.

Honestly, unless you're someone who runs 3+ card bots and is off laughing at Valve's "stupidity" while twirling your mustache you'll probably be affected quite minimally. You'll just be lead more towards buying legitimate games rather than obtaining swarms and swarms of games you'd never wish to play (due to them being unplayable masses of assets) for the sake of cards. Or just to buy games you like and get cards as a bonus, as Valve intended initially.


For the purpose of actual idling, you'd likely still need to play the game for some period of time beyond a few seconds, if only because not doing so will add +1 to the "this game is shite and nobody is actually playing it" pool and thus slowing down card-gain for everybody. What'll likely happen is that anyone who has played "enough time" will gain cards for the period they played. So if you'd normally get 4 cards for 2 hours, you'll gain those 4 cards immediately rather than needing to do ANOTHER 2 hours after card-dropping is enabled.

Disclaimer: This is just from what I understand so I may well be wrong.

引用自 Shadok：

So, what'll happen is that new games which show no actual player presence, just idling bots, will not drop cards. It'll make it harder for shitty or fake games to make it onto the market purely for the sake of obtaining cards.

It will make those card-traders who only go out and use free-keys to get cards a little less viable, but those who have legitimate games will be unaffected.

Honestly, unless you're someone who runs 3+ card bots and is off laughing at Valve's "stupidity" while twirling your mustache you'll probably be affected quite minimally. You'll just be lead more towards buying legitimate games rather than obtaining swarms and swarms of games you'd never wish to play (due to them being unplayable masses of assets) for the sake of cards. Or just to buy games you like and get cards as a bonus, as Valve intended initially.


For the purpose of actual idling, you'd likely still need to play the game for some period of time beyond a few seconds, if only because not doing so will add +1 to the "this game is shite and nobody is actually playing it" pool and thus slowing down card-gain for everybody. What'll likely happen is that anyone who has played "enough time" will gain cards for the period they played. So if you'd normally get 4 cards for 2 hours, you'll gain those 4 cards immediately rather than needing to do ANOTHER 2 hours after card-dropping is enabled.

Disclaimer: This is just from what I understand so I may well be wrong.

My question is, will the game show any trading cards in it but wont drop it? will Idle master idle this game untill it drops a card (which could be in more than 1 month?) or will it just dismiss it?
Will games from providers like G2a, Kinguin, GreenmanGaming, Indiegala and BundleStars be affected by this? will this new "system" accept games that has been activated using a key as a normal game (real) or it has to be purchased off the steam store?

Sorry if most of these questions are in the wrong thread and most probably wrong group, I am just really curious about this.

Update: Should've said questions instead of question..

Well, the short answer is that I don't know. Nobody does yet.

That said, here's my THEORY on how it'll work (Which will soon enough change to reveal how close I am to the mark no doubt):

Idlemaster will NOT idle "indefinitely" because Valve will remove unclaimable cards from the badge list (which idlemaster uses to record the card presence). Thus IM will be unaffected.

As the system says nothing about changing how keys currently work, I imagine that nothing will change there. G2A and the rest will not change. If a game's key is bought off steam but the game itself is legitimate, no reason to think it'd not work as it currently does.

Thanks, Shadok, now i think i've got it. As for me - i used to be a very active buyer and player for good games (mostly AAA FPS series, like FarCry, L4D, Unreal Tournament and so on) initially, but since some time i stopped playing those, and left my Steam account almost only for farming the Trading Cards, via buying games that i have some interest in, if their price (with a discount) covers, or is close to all their card drops price, or getting indie games for free from the websites mentioned above, and just idling those games using IM, so, the games i idle are not some "useless buches of assets", yet i would never buy most of them if they'd cost me something, and will probably never actually play many of them (speaking about that, idling them with IM only adds to their "played time", but earns no achievements, even the simpliest ones, like "complete level 1" or "kill your first enemy", so i guess in long term and because of the mass giveaways on the aforementioned websites such behaviour can lead to "rating drop" for those games).

As for the "how IM will handle those games" - i'm not totally usre, but as i said in my initial post, i think IM has already cut some games from the list of "yet unidled" ones, and i'm getting more sure about that, ince today i think i've noticed another drop in the "unidled" games number in my IM. Again, i might be wrong, simply because i don't screenshot IM or write down/memorize the exact number of unidled games before quitting the program (and atm i have 0 unidled games left) but i have strong feeling that the number is really getting decreased between sessions, for a noticeable amount, bigger than it would normally, during the idling. Next time i'll get a big bunch of games i, or someone else should check this percisely.

P.S. Sorry if my English feels awkward - it's a foreign language for me and i haven't practiced it much in a while...