http://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/tradingcards/faq/

Read it and learn how the trading card system works.

If IM says you have 0 cards and 0 games then thats whta you have. Card drops are not unlimited and free games do not drop cards unless you make ingame or dlc purchases for them.

It's all in the above FAQ

No one knows for sure if you can get a VAC ban from using IM while playing on a VAC enabled server.

To be 100% safe it is highly recommended to kill IM while playing VAC enabled games.

If Valve wanted to they could put a check in there to auto ban people who use IM. Just like they do with cheat programs.

So why take the risk? There is zero benefit to running IM while playing not just a VAC game but any game. Doing so dramatically increases the drop rate for cards making them take longer to drop.

http://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/groups/idlemastery/discussions/0/616198623972294822/

Has responses by the dev on the subject.

But basically it is highly recommended that you do not use IM while playing on VAC enabled servers.

not sure if valve changed anything but I have noticed that the last few games I tried to idle for have taken a bit longer than usual to drop cards.

supposedly the dev can set a drop rate from a set range provided by valve .. i though i read anywhere from 15 mins to over an hour per card drop.

Because free games do not drop cards unless you spend money in the game.

http://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/tradingcards/faq/

buy more games to idle or just play your games.

Free card drops are not unlimited. Once you get all the free ones from the games you own that's it.

http://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/tradingcards/faq/

If a game has 6 cards you get 3 free drops.
If a game has 8 cards you get 4 free drops.

Basically you take the total cards a game has and divide by two. If a game has an odd number of cards round up. Game has 7 cards you get 4 free drops.

Duplicates can drop so you may get 2, 3 or even 4 of the same card. Every card also has a foil version. You may even get one of those on a drop but it's rare.

Once you get all the free drops that's it the game will no longer drop cards. If you want the rest to craft the badge buy or trade for the ones you are missing. Sell the dupes or trade them.

Nope.

It needs access to your library to see what games you own so it can idle for cards.

It is safe and the source code is available to people to look through. If something bad was happening here it would have been detected a LONG time ago and this program would not exist anymore.

The developer of IM gets ZERO personal information from your account. No passwords. No credit card info. Nothing. All the program can see is what the public sees when they look at your profile. They also can not do anything to your account. The login system is the same system that places like Steamgifts.com uses, OpenID.

It basically uses the freely available Steam API to send the same command that is sent to the Steam servers when you run a game. It makes it appear that you are actually running the game.

This program is used by thousands of people and not one person has been banned from Steam for using it. What this program does can be done by anybody. Valve has pretty much no way to prevent something like this from being used or even detect that it is being run to possibly ban you.

Just don't run this and play a game on your account at the same time. Using this and playing a VAC enabled game does run the risk of a VAC ban as the VAC system may see IM as a cheat program. Also running two games at the same time does not increase your card drop rates anyway.

Just took look at your games ...

Arma does not have cards.
Arma 2 does not have cards.
Killing Floor 2 does not have cards.
DayZ does not have cards.

All the games on your account that have card drops already dropped all their free cards.


Arma 3 has 8 different cards. You get 4 free drops from playing / idling the game. Duplicate cards, like the ones you got from Arma 3 count as a card drop. That's how the Steam trading card system works. To get the remaining cards to craft the badge you need to trade with friends or buy them off the Steam market.

What ever Idle Master is telling you you have for card drops remaining is correct. It pulls that info directly from your badge page. That is why you sign in to Idle Master.

Take a look at your badge page. It will show you there what games have cards drops that you own as well as what remaining free drops the game has left. Games with remaining drops will have a green PLAY button on them.

Also I suggest you read this:
http://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/tradingcards/faq/
It explains in detail how the trading card system works.