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常見問題包含了您可能會經常遇到的問題及它們的解答。 如果您的問題較不常見，請參閱其他常見問題。
在嘗試了解什麼是ASF之前，你應該先了解什麼是Steam交換卡片以及它的獲得方式，這在官方的常見問題中有詳細的說明。
簡而言之，Steam交換卡片是種可收集物品，在您擁有特定的遊戲後即可獲得它們。交換卡片可用於合成徽章、於Steam社群市集中販售，或其他您想對它們做的事。
這裡再次強調核心重點，因為人們通常不想同意，並無視這些事實：
- 您必須在您的Steam帳號上擁有相應的遊戲，才有資格從該遊戲掉落卡片。 親友同享的遊戲不包含在內。
- 您無法無限制地掛卡，每款遊戲的交換卡片皆有固定掉落的數量。 只要您掛完這些卡片（約等同於整套卡片的一半數量），這款遊戲將不再能掛出新卡片。 這無關您出售、交易、合成或其他您對已獲得卡牌的行為，只要可掉落的數量用完，這款遊戲就是掛完了。
- 如果您沒有在免費遊戲中消費，這類遊戲將不會掉落卡片。 這是指永久免費遊玩的遊戲，例如《絕地要塞2》或《Dota 2》。 擁有免費遊戲無法讓您掉落出卡片。
- 不論是否擁有遊戲，受限使用者帳戶都無法掉落交換卡片。 （以前曾可以掉落，但現在已經沒辦法了。）
- 不論在商店頁面顯示什麼，您在促銷期間以免費方式獲得的付費遊戲，將無法掉落交換卡片。 （以前曾可以掉落，但現在已經沒辦法了。）
如您所見，Steam交換卡片是您遊玩付費遊戲，或在免費遊戲中消費的獎勵。 若您遊玩一款遊戲足夠長的時間，該遊戲的所有卡片最終都會掉落至您的物品庫中，這使您能夠（在獲得另外半套後）有機會完成一個徽章、賣掉它們，或其他任何您想處置的方式。
現在我們已經解釋了Steam的基礎知識，接下來要開始說明ASF。 程式本身非常複雜且難以完全理解，所以我們接下來只會簡單介紹，並不會深入解釋完整的技術細節。
ASF使用您提供的憑證，透過我們內建的自訂Steam用戶端來登入您的Steam帳號。 在登入成功後，它會剖析您的徽章頁面，來搜尋可掛卡的遊戲（還有X張卡片會掉落）。 在剖析完所有頁面，並建構出最終的掛卡遊戲清單後，ASF會選擇最有效的掛卡演算法並開始掛卡。 掛卡過程取決於您所選擇的掛卡演算法，這通常包含執行所選的遊戲，及定期（與有物品掉落時）檢查該遊戲是否已完成掛卡⸺若已掛完，ASF將會換下一款遊戲繼續掛卡，重複這個過程，直到所有遊戲都完成掛卡。
請注意，上述說明是簡化過的，且也沒有描述ASF所提供的諸多額外功能。 若您想了解ASF的所有細節，請造訪我們Wiki的其餘頁面。 我盡量在此處以淺顯易懂的方式說明，在不需要知道技術細節的情形下，讓每個人都能理解⸺並鼓勵進階使用者深入研究。
作為一個程式，ASF提供了一些魔法。 首先，它不需要下載任何遊戲檔案，就能夠立刻遊玩遊戲。 其次，它完全獨立於您的Steam用戶端⸺您不需要執行Steam用戶端，甚至也不需要安裝。 再者，這是個自動化的解決方案⸺這代表ASF會自動為您處理事情，而不需要您告訴它該如何⸺這為您解決了麻煩並節省了時間。 最後，它毋須使用程序模擬來欺騙Steam網路（而Idle Master正是這樣做），因為ASF能直接與Steam網路通訊。 它很快速、且為輕量級，是個完美的解決方案，讓每個人都能輕鬆獲得交換卡片⸺您可以讓它在後台運作，而去做其他的事情，甚至在離線模式下遊玩。
除了上述優點，ASF也有些因Steam造成的技術限制⸺我們無法掛您並未擁有的遊戲，無法掛出超過限制的額外卡片，亦無法在您遊玩時同時掛卡。 考慮到ASF的運作原理，這些限制應該十分合理。並值得一提的是，ASF並沒有超能力，也無法超越物理限制，所以請注意⸺它就像是您讓別人從另一台PC登入您的帳號，並進行掛卡是一樣的。
綜上所述⸺ASF是個能為您省去麻煩，並幫助您掉落可獲得的卡片的程式。 它還提供了一些額外的功能，但讓我們先只專注於掛卡功能中。
是的。 ASF與Steam官方用戶端相同，需要您的帳號憑證，因為它使用了相同的方法來與Steam網路交互。 但這並不代表您就必須將帳號憑證放在ASF設定檔中，可以在SteamLogin及／或SteamPassword屬性保留null或空值，並在每次執行ASF時輸入所需的資訊（及其他相關的登入憑證，請參閱組態設定章節）。 這樣，您的資訊就不會儲存在任何地方，但在這種情形下，如果沒有您的協助，ASF將會無法自動啟動。 ASF也提供了幾種方式來增加您的安全性，因此若您是進階使用者，可以閱讀該部分的Wiki。 若您只是一般使用者，且您不想要在ASF設定檔中留下您的帳號憑證，則不需要這樣做，並在ASF要求這些資訊時輸入它們。
請注意，ASF作為一個個人使用的工具，您的憑證永遠不會離開您的電腦。 您也不應主動將憑證分享給任何人，因為這會違反Steam服務條款⸺一份沒人記得但卻非常重要的規定。 您的詳細資料不會被傳送至我們的伺服器或第三方中，只會直接傳送至Valve營運的Steam伺服器中。 不論您是否將憑證放在設定檔中，我們都無從得知您的憑證，亦無法幫您恢復。
認真地說，「不論多久，您都必須等待」。 每款遊戲的掛卡難度是由該遊戲的開發者／發行者所訂，只有他們才能決定交換卡片掉落的速率。 大多數的遊戲會每隔約30分鐘掉落一張交換卡片，但也有遊戲會需要您遊玩數個小時後才會開始掉落。 除此之外，若您未具有足夠的遊玩時數，您的帳號可能受到掉卡限制，如效能章節中所述。 請不要嘗試去猜測ASF掛卡所需的時間⸺這無法由您或ASF來決定。 您無法加速掛卡進度，也不存在卡片能無法及時掉落的「錯誤」⸺您無法控制交換卡片掉過的過程，ASF也無法。 在最理想的情形下，您將每隔30分鐘獲得一張交換卡片。 而在最差的情形下，可能在您啟動ASF四個小時內都沒有掉落任何卡片。 這些情形都是正常的，且在我們的效能章節中有介紹。
能嚴重影響掛卡速率的唯一因素是您Bot實例所選擇的掛卡演算法。 其他的因素只能帶來微不足道的影響，無法加速掛卡進度，而部分行為例如多次重啟ASF程序，甚至會使進度更為緩慢。 若您真的想要充分地利用掛卡過程的每一秒鐘，ASF允許您微調一些與掛卡相關的變數，例如FarmingDelay⸺這些參數都在組態設定中有進一步的說明。 但正如我所說的，這些的影響可說是微不足道，為您的帳號選擇正確的掛卡演算法才是唯一嚴重影響掛卡速率的關鍵因素，其他都只能作為錦上添花之效。 不要過分擔心掛卡速率，只要啟動ASF並讓它自主運作⸺我可以向您保證，這是我能想得到的最有效的掛卡方式。 認真就輸了，隨興就好。
ASF會依據您可掉落的交換卡片數量及您選擇的演算法，來預估所需要的時間⸺這與您實際掛卡要花費的時間無關，通常會需要更久的時間⸺因為ASF只會假設最理想的情形，並忽略所有Steam網路異常、網際網路斷線、Steam伺服器超載等問題。 它只應被當成您在理想情形下，來粗估ASF掛卡時間的指標，因為實際情形會有所不同，甚至差異巨大。 如上所述，請不要嘗試去猜測遊戲所需的掛卡時間，因為您無法決定它，ASF也無法。
ASF是個C#程式，需要.NET環境來執行。 從.NET 6.0開始，Android就已成為一個受支援的平台，但因為目前仍缺少可供使用的ASP.NET執行環境，在Android執行ASF仍受阻礙。 儘管尚未有原生的選擇，但目前在ARM架構上仍有可運作於GNU/Linux的建置版本，所以完全能夠使用像Linux Deploy等方式安裝Linux，然後如平常那樣在Linux chroot中執行ASF。
在所有ASF的需求都被滿足時，我們就會考慮發布官方版的Android建置版本。
不能，這違反Steam服務條款，且Valve在上一次對掛機獲得TF2物品的帳號實施大規模社群封鎖時，就明確表示過了。 ASF是一個Steam交換卡片的掛卡程式，而非遊戲物品掛機工具⸺它沒有任何能掛遊戲物品的能力，也無計畫在未來加入這類功能，主要是因為這違反Steam服務條款。 請勿詢問這類問題⸺您能獲得的最佳答案便是來自鄉民的檢舉，使您陷入更大的麻煩。 這同樣適用於其他所有種類的掛機，例如在CS:GO直播中掛機獲取掉落物品。 ASF只會專注於Steam交換卡片上。
可以，這有幾種不同的方式。 若您想調整預設的掛卡順序，可以修改FarmingOrdersBot設定屬性。 若您想手動將某些遊戲列入自動掛卡黑名單，可以使用fb指令來設定黑名單。 若您想掛所有的卡，且想要先掛某一部份，可以使用fq指令來管理優先掛卡佇列。 最後，若您只想掛您想要的遊戲，那您可以使用FarmPriorityQueueOnlyBot設定屬性來達成，並將您所選的應用程式加入至優先掛卡佇列中。
除了管理上述的自動掛卡模組以外，您也可以使用手動掛卡模式play指令，或使用一些雜項的外部設定，例如GamesPlayedWhileIdleBot設定屬性。
可以，ASF允許您以幾種方式做到。
最好的方法是設定GamesPlayedWhileIdle設定屬性，ASF會在無卡可掛時掛您所選的AppID。 若您希望在其他遊戲仍未掛完卡時，也始終掛您所指定的遊戲，那麼可以接著設定FarmPriorityQueueOnly，這樣ASF就只會掛那些您明確設定出的遊戲；或設定Paused暫停掛卡模組，直到您取消暫停。
或者，您也可以使用play指令，來使ASF開始掛您所選的遊戲。 但請注意，play只應在您需要臨時掛遊戲時使用，因為它並不是個持續指令，若ASF遇到例如像Steam網路斷線等情形，就會恢復成預設狀態。 因此，我們建議您使用GamesPlayedWhileIdle，除非您確實想在短時間內掛您選擇的遊戲，然後再恢復成一般的掛卡流程。
可以，ASF甚至不需要下載實際的遊戲檔案，因此不論遊戲的平台或技術的要求為何，它都能正確運作於您Steam帳號下的授權遊戲。 即使您不在限制區域內，儘管我們無法保證，但它仍能執行區域限制（鎖區）的遊戲。（在我們上次測試時，可以這樣運作）
兩個程式唯一的相似之處只有它們的開發目的，就是掛機Steam遊戲來獲得掉落的交換卡片。 其他任何方面，包含實際的掛卡方式、使用的演算法、程式結構、功能性、相容性，最後連原始碼本身，都是完全不一樣的，兩者並沒有任何共同之處，甚至連核心介面都是不同的⸺IM執行於.NET Framework，而ASF是.NET (Core)。 建立ASF是為了解決IM的問題，這些問題無法透過簡單地編輯程式碼來解決⸺這也是為什麼ASF從零開始編寫，而未使用任何一行IM的程式碼，甚至是它的開發想法，因為它的原始碼及邏輯一開始就存在缺陷。 IM與ASF的關係就如同Windows及Linux⸺兩者都是能安裝於您PC上的作業系統，但除了服務這個目的相似外，其餘地方毫無相關性。
這也是為什麼您不應拿對於IM的期望，來將它與ASF做比較。 您應該將ASF與IM視為擁有各自獨家功能的兩個獨立程式。 您可以在兩者間找到重疊的功能，但能找到的非常少，因為ASF以完全不同於IM的方式來達成目的。
是的。 ASF更加可靠，且含有許多內建功能，不論您以何種方式掛卡，這些功能都是非常關鍵的，而IM卻並未提供這些。
ASF擁有正確的邏輯來處理未發行的遊戲；而IM會嘗試去掛這些已有交換卡片的遊戲，即使它們尚未發行。 當然，在遊戲發行前是不可能掛卡的，所以您的掛卡程序就會被卡住。 此時您就只能將它加入至黑名單、等待遊戲發行，或手動跳過這款遊戲了。 這幾種解決方式都並不友善，都需要您的操作⸺而ASF會自動（暫時）跳過未發行遊戲的掛卡，並在它們發行後恢復掛卡，完美地避免了上述問題。
ASF也擁有正確的邏輯來處理影集。 Steam上有許多影片也擁有交換卡片，但在徽章頁面上它們被標記了錯誤的appID，例如Double Fine Adventure⸺IM會以錯誤的appID掛卡，使程序卡住，導致無法獲得任何卡片。 與上述情形相同，您得將它加入至黑名單或手動跳過，這都需要您的操作。 而ASF會自動找到正確的appID來掛卡，使您能夠獲得交換卡片。
除此之外，ASF在遇到網路問題或Steam問題時更穩定且更可靠⸺ASF在絕大多數時間都能正常運作，只要正確設定後，就不用您再次操作；而大多數人使用IM時都會遇到各種問題，需要額外的修復操作，甚至完全無法使用。 它甚至完全相依於您的Steam用戶端，這代表在您Steam用戶端遇到問題時，它也無法正常運作。 ASF只要能連線至Steam網路即可正常運作，甚至毋須執行或安裝Steam用戶端。
上述三點皆為您該考慮使用ASF的重要原因，因為它們會直接影響到每個使用者的掛卡過程，沒有人能肯定這「不會影響到我」，因為Steam的維護及問題會影響到所有人。 您可以在本章節中的其餘部分，了解到更多重要及不那麼重要的原因。 因此長話短說，是的，所以即使您不需要與IM相比的ASF額外功能，也應該考慮使用ASF。
除此之外，IM的專案已正式停止維護，在未來有可能完全損壞，因為現在有更強大的解決方案（不只是ASF），所以沒有人願意繼續修復它了。 已有很多使用者無法再使用IM，而這個數字只會越來越多不會減少。 您應始終避免使用過時的軟體，不只是IM，其他所有廢止的程式也該如此。 無人維護代表沒有人在乎它是否還能運作，沒有人驗證，也沒有人對它的功能負責，這是一個非常嚴重的安全性問題。 只要出現一個造成Steam基礎架構嚴重問題的致命錯誤就夠了⸺如果無人修復，Steam可能會有新一波的封鎖潮，您有可能在不知情的情形下受到影響。猜猜哪些人經歷過這樣的事情呢？就是那些使用過時版本ASF的使用者。
這取決於您所定義的「有趣」。 若您計畫為不只一個帳號掛卡，那這個答案顯而易見，因為ASF使您能夠以一套優秀的解決方案來為所有帳號掛卡，節省資源、省去麻煩，並避開相容性問題。 但要是您會問這種問題，那您很可能還沒有這種特殊需求，因此，先來讓我們說明使用ASF掛卡單一帳號的好處在哪。
首先，您擁有上述的內建功能，這是掛卡功能的核心，不論您的掛卡目標為何，這都足以讓您考慮使用ASF。 您在上面已經了解這個部份了，所以我們將介紹一些更有趣的功能：
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您可以使用離線模式掛卡（
OnlineStatus中的Offline功能）。 離線模式掛卡使您能夠隱藏您Steam「正在遊戲中」的狀態，這樣您可以在顯示「正在線上」的同時使用ASF繼續掛卡，您的朋友們就不會發現ASF正在代替您玩遊戲。 這是一個絕佳的功能，它使您能夠在Steam用戶端維持在線狀態，但又不會因頻繁的遊戲切換而打擾到您的朋友們，或讓他們誤認為您正在玩遊戲。 若您尊重朋友，只憑這一點就應使用ASF，但這仍只是個開始。 值得一提的是，這個功能與您的Steam隱私設定無關⸺若您自行啟動遊戲，您仍會向朋友們顯示正確的遊戲狀態；只有ASF啟動的遊戲會被隱藏，且這並不會影響到您的帳號。 -
您可以跳過仍可退款的遊戲（
SkipRefundableGames的功能）。 ASF擁有正確的內建邏輯來處理仍可退款的遊戲，您可以設定ASF不要自動掛它們。 這樣您就能夠自行評估那些從Steam商店購買的遊戲是否值這個價格，而不是讓ASF盡快掛完遊戲的卡片。 若您已遊玩超過2小時，或購買超過2周，那麼ASF將會繼續掛這款遊戲，因為它不再能退款。 在此之前，您都有該遊戲的完整控制權，不論您是否滿意，都可以直接退款該遊戲，整個流程您都毋須手動將它加入黑名單中，也不需要在這段期間停用ASF。 -
您可以自動將新物品的通知自動標示成已讀（
BotBehaviour中的DismissInventoryNotifications功能）。 使用ASF掛卡會使您的帳號收到新的交換卡片。 這是您已經知道會發生的事情，所以就讓ASF幫您清理這些無用的通知，來確保您只會注意到那些重要通知。 當然，這取決於您。 -
您可以在Steam特賣期間自動獲得活動的交換卡片（
AutoSteamSaleEvent的功能）。 若您想要，ASF可以在Steam特賣期間自動探索佇列。 這能在Steam特賣期間為您節省大量時間，並能確保您再也不會錯過每日獲得卡片的機會。 -
您可以使用更多選項來自定掛卡順序（
FarmingOrders的功能）。 或許您會想要先掛新買的遊戲？ 或最早購買的？ 依據能掉卡的數量去做排序？ 您已合成的徽章等級排序？ 遊玩時數？ 字母順序？ 依據AppID？ 或完全隨機？ 這完全取決於您。 -
能夠協助您收集完成徽章進度（
TradingPreferences中的SteamTradeMatcher功能）。 透過更進階的調整，您可以將ASF轉換成全功能的使用者機器人，能自動接受STM交易提案，幫助您每天匹配交易，而不需要您的操作。 ASF甚至包含了獨有的ASF雙重驗證模組，使您能夠匯入自己的Steam行動驗證器，讓您能完全自動化整個交易流程。 Or, maybe you want to accept manually and let ASF only prepare those trades for you? That's once again, fully up to you to decide. -
ASF can redeem keys in background for you (background games redeemer feature). Maybe you have a hundred of keys from various bundles that you're too lazy to redeem yourself, going through bunch of windows and agreeing to Steam terms and conditions over and over again. Why not copy-paste your list of keys into ASF and let it do its job? ASF will automatically redeem all of those keys in background, providing you with appropriate output to let you know how each redeem attempt turned out. Moreover, if you have hundreds of keys, you're guaranteed to get rate-limited by Steam sooner or later, and ASF also knows about that, it'll patiently wait for the rate-limit to go away, and resume where it left.
We could now go on and on with entire ASF wiki, pointing out every single feature of the program, but we have to draw a line somewhere. This is it, this is a list of features that you can enjoy as ASF user, where just one of those could easily be considered a major reason to never look back, and we actually listed a lot of them, with even more you can learn about on the rest of our wiki. Ah yes, and we didn't even go into detail with things like ASF's API allowing you to script your own commands, or awesome bots management, since we wanted to keep it simple.
Yes, although the explanation is rather complicated.
On each new process spawned and terminated on your system, steam client automatically sends a request containing all of your games that you're currently playing - this way steam network can calculate hours and make cards drop. However, steam network counts your time played in 1-second intervals, and sending new request resets the current status. In other words, if you did spawn/kill new process every 0.5 second, you'd never drop any card because every 0.5 second steam client would send a new request and steam network would never count even 1 second of play time. Moreover, because of how operating system works, it's actually quite common to see new processes being spawned/terminated without you even doing anything, so even if you're doing nothing on your PC - there are many processes still working in the background, spawning/terminating other processes all the time. Idle master is based on steam client, so this mechanism affects you if you're using it.
ASF is not based on steam client, it has its own steam client implementation. Thanks to that, what ASF is doing, is not spawning any process, but actually sending one, real request to steam network that we started playing a game. This is the same request that would be sent by steam client, but because we have actual control over the ASF steam client, we don't need to spawn new processes, and we're not mimicking steam client regarding send request on every process change, so the mechanism explained above doesn't affect us. Thanks to that, we never interrupt that 1 second interval on steam web side, and that enhances our farming speed.
不。 The interrupts that are happening with normal steam client and idle master have negligible effect on the card drops, so it's not any noticeable difference that would make ASF superior.
However, there is a difference, and you can clearly notice that, as depending on how busy your OS is, cards will drop faster, from a few seconds to even a few minutes, if you're extremely unlucky. Although I wouldn't consider using ASF only because it drops cards faster, as both ASF and Idle Master are affected by how steam web works, ASF just interacts with steam web more effectively, while Idle Master can't control what steam client is actually doing (so it's not Idle Master's fault, but steam client's itself).
Yes, although ASF knows better when to use that feature, based on selected cards farming algorithm. Card drops rate when farming multiple games is close to zero, this is why ASF is using multiple games farming exclusively for hours in order to overcome HoursUntilCardDrops faster, for up to 32 games at once. This is also why you should focus on configuration part of the ASF, and let algorithms decide what is the best way to achieve the goal - what you think is right, is not necessarily right in reality, farming multiple games at once will not provide you with any card drops.
No, ASF doesn't support, neither encourages usage of Steam glitches.
No, the whole point of Steam cards system change was to fight with false statistics and ghost players. ASF won't contribute towards that more than necessary, adding such feature is not planned and won't happen. If your game receives card drops in usual way, ASF will farm them as soon as possible.
不。 ASF unlike IM has independent Steam client included, and Steam network allows only one Steam client at a time to play a game. You can however disconnect ASF any time you like by starting a game (and clicking "OK" when asked if Steam network should disconnect other client) - ASF will then patiently wait till you're done playing, and resume the process afterwards. Alternatively, you can still play in offline mode anytime you like, if that is satisfying for you.
Keep in mind that cards drop rate when playing multiple games is close to 0 anyway, therefore there are no direct benefits from being able to do that with IM, while there are strong benefits of no interfering with other games launched with ASF, which is crucial e.g. VAC-wise.
No, it's not possible because ASF (unlike Idle Master or SAM) does not interfere in any way with steam client nor its processes. It's physically impossible to get VAC ban for using ASF, even during playing on secured servers while ASF is running - this is because ASF doesn't even require Steam Client being installed at all in order to work properly. ASF is the only farming program that can currently guarantee being VAC-free.
ASF 會像此處所提到的一樣，使我無法加入 VAC 防護伺服器嗎？
ASF does not require Steam client being running or even installed at all. According to this concept, it should not cause any VAC-related issues, because ASF guarantees lack of interfering with Steam client and all its processes - this is the main point when talking about VAC-free guarantee that ASF offers.
According to users and best of my knowledge, this is the case right now, as nobody reported any issues like stated in the link above while using ASF. We couldn't reproduce the issue above with ASF as well, while clearly reproducing it with Idle Master.
However, keep in mind that Valve could still add ASF to the blacklist at some point, but it's a complete nonsense as even if they do that, you could still play VAC-secured games from your PC, and use ASF at the same time e.g. on your server, so I'm pretty sure that they know very well that ASF should not be a suspect VAC-wise, and they won't make our lifes harder by blacklisting ASF for no reason. Still, in the worst case you'll be unable to play, like stated above, because VAC-free guarantee of ASF is still here regardless if Steam blacklists ASF binary, or not (and you can still launch ASF on any other machine without Steam client being installed at all). Right now there is no need to do any of that, and let's hope it stays like this.
If you ask if ASF is safe as a software, which means that it won't cause any damage to your computer, won't steal your private data, install viruses or any other stuff like that - it is safe. ASF is free of malware, data stealing, cryptocurrency miners and any (and all) other doubtful behaviour that can be considered malicious or unwanted by the user. In addition to that we have a dedicated remote communication section which covers our privacy policy and ASF behaviour that goes beyond what you configured the program to do yourself.
Our code is open-source, and distributed binaries are always compiled from publicly available sources by automated and trusted continuous integration systems, and not even developers themselves. Each build is reproducible by following our build script and will result in exactly the same, deterministic IL (binary) code. If you for whatever reason don't trust our builds, you can always compile and use ASF from source, including all libraries that ASF is using (such as SteamKit2), which are open-source too.
In the end however, it's always a matter of trust to the developer(s) of your application, so you should decide yourself if you consider ASF safe or not, potentially supporting your decision with technical arguments specified above. Do not blindly believe something only because I said so - check yourself, as that's the only way to make sure.
In order to answer that question, we should take a closer look at Steam ToS. Steam doesn't prohibit using of multiple accounts, in fact, it allows it implying that you can use same mobile authenticator on more than one account. What it however doesn't allow is sharing accounts with other people, but we're not doing that here.
The only real point that considers ASF is the following:
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.
The question is what in fact is Subscription Marketplace process. As we can read:
An example of a Subscription Marketplace is the Steam Community Market
We're not modifying or automating subscription marketplace process, if by subscription marketplace we understand steam community market or steam store. However...
Valve may cancel your Account or any particular Subscription(s) at any time in the event that (a) Valve ceases providing such Subscriptions to similarly situated Subscribers generally, or (b) you breach any terms of this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use).
Therefore, as with every Steam software, ASF is not authorized by Valve and I cannot guarantee that you won't be suspended if Valve suddenly decides that they're banning accounts using ASF now. This is exceptionally unlikely considering the fact that ASF is being used on more than a million of Steam accounts, but still a possibility, regardless of actual probability.
Especially because:
In regard to all Subscriptions, Content and Services that are not authored by Valve, Valve does not screen such third-party content available on Steam or through other sources. Valve assumes no responsibility or liability for such third party content. Some third-party application software is capable of being used by businesses for business purposes - however, you may only acquire such software via Steam for private personal use.
However, Valve clearly acknowledges "Steam idlers" existing, as stated here, so if you asked me, I'm pretty sure that if they weren't fine with them, they'd already do something instead of pointing out that they could cause problems VAC-wise. The key word here is Steam idlers, for example ASF, and not game idlers.
Please note that above is only our interpretation of Steam ToS and various points - ASF is licensed under Apache 2.0 License, which clearly states:
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, ASF is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
You're using this software at your own risk. It's very unlikely that you can get banned for that, but if you do, you can blame only yourself for that.
Yes, we had at least a few incidents so far that resulted in some kind of Steam suspension. Whether ASF itself was the root cause or not is entirely different story that we'll probably never get to know.
First case involved a guy with over 1000+ bots getting trade banned (together with all bots), most likely due to excessive usage of loot ASF executed on all bots at once, or other suspicious one-side amount of trades in a very short time.
Hello XXX, Thank you for contacting Steam Support. It looks like this account was used to manage a network of bot accounts. Botting is a violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement.
Please, use some common sense and don't assume that you can do such crazy things only because ASF allows you to do that. Doing loot ASF on over 1k of bots can be easily considered a DDoS attack, and personally I'm not shocked that somebody got banned for such a thing. Keep in mind some bare common sense and minimum of fair use in regards to Steam service, and most likely you'll be fine.
Second case involved a guy with 170+ bots getting banned during Steam's 2017 Winter Sale.
Your account was blocked for violation of the agreement of the subscriber Steam. Judging by the exchanges and other factors, this account was used to illegally collect collectible cards on Steam, as well as related and not only commercial activities. The account has been permanently blocked and Steam Support can not provide additional support on this issue.
This case is once again very hard to analyze, because of vague response from Steam support that barely offers any details. Based on my personal thoughts, this user probably exchanged Steam cards for some kind of money (level up bot?) or in some other way tried to cash out on Steam. In case you were unaware, this is also illegal according to Steam ToS.
Third case involved user with 120+ bots being banned for breach of Steam online conduct.
Hello XXX, Thank you for contacting Steam Support. This and other accounts were used for flooding our network infrastructure, which is a violation of Steam online conduct. The account has been permanently blocked and Steam Support can not provide additional support on this issue.
This case is a bit easier to analyze because of extra details provided by the user. Apparently the user was using a very outdated ASF version that included a bug causing ASF to send excessive number of requests to Steam servers. The bug itself did not exist at first but was activated due to Steam breaking change that was fixed in future version. ASF is supported only in latest stable version released on GitHub. Software is written by humans, and humans tend to make mistakes. If the mistake has a global scope, it's quickly being patched up and released to all users as a bugfix. Valve won't suddenly ban over a million of ASF users due to my mistake, for obvious reasons. However, if you intentionally resign from using up-to-date ASF, then by definition you're in a very small minority of users that are exposed to incidents like these due to no support, as there is nobody watching over your outdated version of ASF, nobody fixing it and nobody ensuring that you won't get outright banned by just launching it. Please use up-to-date software, not only ASF, but all other applications as well.
The most recent case happened around June of 2021, according to the user:
Using your program, I have been making booster packages with 28 accounts for 3 years and with 128 accounts for the last 6 months. I was online with maximum 15 accounts simultaneously to make booster packs and send them to the main account. Last month, I increased the number of online accounts simultaneously to 20, and 1 week after that, all of my accounts were banned. This email is not to blame you, on the contrary, I was always aware of the consequences. I wanted you to know what types of behavior result in a permanent ban.
It's hard to say whether increase in concurrent accounts online was the direct reason for the ban, I wouldn't count on that, instead I believe that the number of accounts alone was the main culprit, increased concurrency of online accounts probably just drew attention to the user in question, as he clearly had far more bots than our recommendation.
All of the incidents above have one thing in common - ASF is just a tool and it's your decision how you're going to make use of it. You do not get banned for using ASF directly, but for how you're using it. It can be a helper tool farming just one single account, or a massive farming network made from thousands of bots. In any of those cases, I'm not offering legal advice, and you should decide yourself about your ASF usage in the first place. I'm not hiding any information that could help you, e.g. the fact that ASF got some people banned, as I have no reason to - it's your choice what you want to do with that information. If you ask me - use some common sense, avoid owning more bots than our recommendation, do not send hundreds of trades at the same time, always use up-to-date ASF version and you should be fine. Every single incident of this nature for some reason always happened to people that have disregarded our recommendation and decided that they know better than us how many bots they can run. Whether it's just a coincidence or some actual factor, that's up to you to decide. I'm not offering any legal advice, only giving you my thoughts that you can find useful, or disregard them entirely and operate only on facts linked above.
You can find detailed explanation in remote communication section. You should review it if you care about your privacy, e.g. if you're wondering why accounts being used in ASF are joining our Steam group. ASF doesn't collect any sensitive information, and doesn't share it with any third-parties.
Yes, and that version is not unsupported in any way, just not officially built. Check out compatibility section for generic variant. ASF doesn't have any strong dependency upon the OS, and it can work anywhere where you can get a working .NET runtime, which includes 32-bit Windows, even if there is no win-x86 OS-specific package from us.
Yes, and we're very happy to hear that you're enjoying our project! You can find various donation possibilities under every release and also on the main page. It's nice to note that in addition to generic money donations we also accept Steam items, so nothing is stopping you from donating skins, keys or a small part of the cards that you've farmed with ASF if you'd like to. Thank you in advance for your generosity!
Yes, you must set it in SteamParentalCode bot config property. This is mainly because ASF does access many protected parts of your Steam account and it's impossible for ASF to operate without it.
Yes, if you just want to start ASF with paused cards farming module, you can set Paused bot config property to true in order to achieve that. This will allow you to resume it during runtime.
If you want to completely disable cards farming module and ensure that it'll never run without you explicitly telling it otherwise, then we recommend to set FarmPriorityQueueOnly to true, which instead of just pausing it, will disable the farming completely until you add the games to idle priority queue yourself.
With cards farming module paused/disabled, you can make use of extra ASF features, such as GamesPlayedWhileIdle.
ASF is a console app, there is no window to be minimized, because window is created for you by your OS. You can however use any third-party tool capable of doing so, such as RBTray for Windows, or screen for Linux/macOS. Those are only examples, there are many other apps with similar functionality.
是的。 ASF is using the same method to log in to Steam network as the official client, therefore it also preserves ability to receive booster packs for accounts that are being used in ASF. Moreover, preserving that ability doesn't even require logging in into Steam community, so you can safely use OnlineStatus of Offline if you'd like to.
Yes, through several different ways. Check out commands section for more info.
Thank you for your interest! You can find all details in our localization section.
Yes, it's explained in commands section. You can do so through Steam group chat, although using ASF-ui could be easier for you.
Cards farming rate differs from game to game, as you can read in performance. It takes a while, usually several hours per game, and you shouldn't expect cards to drop in a few minutes since launching a program. If you can see that ASF actively checks cards status, and switches the game after current one is fully farmed, then everything works fine. It's possible that you've enabled an option such as DismissInventoryNotifications of BotBehaviour which automatically dismisses inventory notifications. Check out configuration for details.
Simply shutdown the ASF process, for example by clicking [X] on Windows. If instead you want to stop a particular bot of your choice but keep other ones running, then take a look at Enabled bot config property, or stop command. If you instead want to stop automatic farming process, yet keep ASF running for your account, then that's what Paused bot config property and pause command is for.
ASF as a program doesn't have any hard upper limit of bot instances, so you can run as much as you have memory on your machine, however, you're still being limited by the Steam network and other Steam services. Currently you can run up to 100-200 bots with a single IP and a single ASF instance. It's possible to run more bots with more IPs and more ASF instances, by working around IP limitations. Keep in mind that if you're using that big amount of bots, you should control their number yourself, such as making sure that all of them in fact are logging in and working at the same time. ASF was not tweaked for that huge number of bots, and the general rule applies that the more bots you have, the more issues you'll encounter. Also notice that the limit above in general depends on many internal factors, it's approximation rather than a strict limit - you will most likely be able to run more/less bots than specified above.
ASF team suggests running (and owning) up to 10 bots in total, anything above is not supported and done at your own risk, against our suggestion made here. This recommendation is based on internal Valve guidelines, as well as our own suggestions. Whether you're going to comply with this rule or not is your choice, ASF as a tool will not go against your own will, even if it'll result in your Steam accounts being suspended for doing so. Therefore, ASF will display you a warning if you'll go above what we recommend, but still allow you to run anything you want at your own risk and lack of our support.
You can run as many ASF instances on one machine as you like, assuming every instance has its own directory and its own configs, and account used in one instance is not used in another one. However, ask yourself why you want to do that. ASF is optimized to handle more than a hundred of accounts at the same time, and launching that hundred of bots in their own ASF instances degrades performance, takes more OS resources (such as CPU and memory), and causes a potential synchronization issues between standalone ASF instances, as ASF is forced to share its limiters with other instances.
Therefore, my strong suggestion is, always run maximum of one ASF instance per one IP/interface. If you have more IPs/interfaces, by all means you can run more ASF instances, with every instance using its own IP/interface or unique WebProxy setting. If you don't, launching more ASF instances is totally pointless, as you won't gain anything from launching more than 1 instance per a single IP/interface. Steam will not magically allow you to run more bots just because you've launched them in another ASF instance, and ASF doesn't limit you to begin with.
Of course, there are still valid use cases for multiple ASF instances on the same network interface, such as hosting ASF service for your friends with each friend having its own unique ASF instance in order to guarantee isolation between bots and even the ASF processes themselves, however, you're not circumventing any Steam limitations this way, that's entirely different purpose.
Status indicates how given redeem attempt turned out. There are many different statuses possible, most common ones include:
| 狀態 | 描述 |
|---|---|
| NoDetail | "OK" status indicating success - the key was successfully redemeed. |
| Timeout | Steam network didn't respond in given time, we don't know if the key was redeemed, or not (most likely was, but you can try again). |
| BadActivationCode | The provided key is invalid (not recognized as any valid key by Steam network). |
| DuplicateActivationCode | The provided key was already redeemed by some other account, or revoked by developer/publisher. |
| AlreadyPurchased | Your account already owns packageID that is connected with this key. Keep in mind that this does not indicate whether the key is DuplicateActivationCode or not - only that it's valid and it wasn't used in this attempt. |
| RestrictedCountry | This is region-locked key and your account is not in the valid region that is permitted to redeem it. |
| DoesNotOwnRequiredApp | You can't redeem that key as you're missing some other app - mainly base game when you're attempting to redeem DLC package. |
| RateLimited | You made too many redeem attempts and your account was temporarily blocked. 一小時後再試一次。 |
不。 ASF is not affiliated with any service and all such claims are false. Your Steam account is your property and you can use your account in whatever way you wish, but Valve clearly stated in official ToS that:
You are responsible for the confidentiality of your login and password and for the security of your computer system. Valve is not responsible for the use of your password and Account or for all of the communication and activity on Steam that results from use of your login name and password by you, or by any person to whom you may have intentionally or by negligence disclosed your login and/or password in violation of this confidentiality provision.
ASF is licensed on liberal Apache 2.0 License, which allows other developers to further integrate ASF with their own projects and services legally. However, such third-party projects utilizing ASF are not guaranteed to be secure, reviewed, appropriate or legal according to Steam ToS. If you want to know our opinion, we strongly encourage you to NOT share ANY of your account details with third-party services. If such service turns out to be a typical scam, you'll be left alone with the problem, most likely without your Steam account and ASF won't take any responsibility for third-party services claiming to be safe and secure, because ASF team did not authorize neither reviewed any of those. In other words, you're using them at your own risk, against our suggestion made above.
In addition to that, official Steam ToS clearly states that:
You may not reveal, share or otherwise allow others to use your password or Account except as otherwise specifically authorized by Valve.
It's your account and your choice. Just don't say that nobody warned you. ASF as a program meets all rules mentioned above, as you're not sharing your account details with anyone, and you're using the program for your own personal use, but any other "cards farming service" does require from you your account credentials, so it also violates the rule above (actually several of them). Like with Steam ToS evaluation, we're not offering any legal advice, and you should decide yourself if you want to use those services, or not - according to us it directly violates Steam ToS and may result in suspension if Valve finds out. Like pointed out above, we strongly recommend to NOT use any of such services.
The reason for that could be related to known issue of Steam, which happens when you have two licenses for the same game, one of which has card drops limited. This usually happens when you activate game for free during a mass giveaway on Steam, and then activate a key for the same game (but without limitations), e.g. from a paid bundle. If such situation happens, Steam reports on badge page that game still has cards to drop, but no matter how much you play the game - cards will never drop due to free license on your account. Since it's not an ASF issue, but a Steam one, we can't somehow circumvent it on ASF's side, and you need to solve it yourself.
There are two ways to solve the issue. Firstly, you can blacklist this game in ASF, either with fbadd command or with Blacklist configuration property. This will prevent ASF from trying to farm cards from this game, but will not solve the underlying issue which prevents you from obtaining card drops from the affected game. Secondly, you can use Steam support self-service tool to remove free license from your account, leaving only full license that includes the card drops. In order to do so, firstly visit your licenses and product key activations page and locate both free and paid license for the affected game. Usually it's fairly easy - both have similar name, but free one has "limited free promotional package" or other "promo" in the license name, plus "complimentary" in "acquisition method" field. Sometimes it might be more tricky, for example if free package was in some bundle and has a different name. If you have found two licenses like that - then it's indeed the issue described here, and you can safely remove free license without losing the game.
In order to remove the free license from your account, visit Steam support page and put the affected game name into the search field, the game should be available in "products" section, click on it. Alternatively, you can just use https://help.steampowered.com/wizard/HelpWithGame?appid=<appID> link and replace <appID> with appID of the game that causes troubles. Afterwards, click on "I want to permanently remove this game from my account" and then select the faulty free license that you've found above, usually the one with "limited free promotional package" in the name (or similar). After removal of the free license, ASF should be able to drop cards from the affected game without issues, you should restart the farming operation after the removal just to be sure that Steam picks up the right license this time.
There are two main reasons here. First and most obvious reason is the fact that you're referring to Steam store where given game is announced as card drops enabled game. This is wrong assumption, as it simply states that the game has card drops included, but not necessarily this function for that game is enabled right away. You can read more about this in official announcement.
In short, card drops icon in Steam store doesn't mean anything, check your badge pages for confirmation whether a game has card drops enabled or not - this is also what ASF is doing. If your game doesn't appear on the list as a game with cards possible to drop, then this game is not possible to farm, regardless of reason.
Second issue is less obvious, and it's the situation when you can see that your game indeed is available with card drops on your badge page, yet it's not being farmed by ASF right away. Unless you're hitting some other bug, such as ASF being unable to check badge pages (described below), it's simply a cache effect and on ASF side Steam is still reporting outdated badges page. This issue should solve itself sooner or later, when cache gets invalidated. There is also no way to fix this on our side.
Of course, all of that assumes that you're running ASF with default untouched settings, since you could also add this game to farming blacklist, use FarmPriorityQueueOnly, SkipRefundableGames and so on.
It does, but not in real-time. Steam records your playtime in fixed intervals and schedules update for it, but you're not guaranteed to have it updated immediately the moment you quit the session, let alone during such. Just because the playtime isn't updated in real-time doesn't mean that it's not recorded, it's usually updated every 30 minutes or so.
ASF writes to its log a bunch of information on various logging levels. Our objective is to explain precisely what ASF is doing, including what Steam issues it has to deal with, or other problems to overcome. Most of the time not everything is relevant, this is why we have two major levels being used in ASF in terms of problems - a warning level, and error level.
General ASF rule is that warnings are not errors, therefore they should not be reported. A warning is an indicator to you that something potentially unwanted happen. Whether it was Steam not reacting, API throwing errors or your network connection being down - it's a warning, and it means we expected it to happen, so don't bother ASF development with it. Of course you're free to ask about them or get help by using our support, but you shouldn't assume that those are ASF errors worth reporting (unless we confirm otherwise).
Errors on the other hand indicate a situation that should not happen, therefore they're worth reporting as long as you made sure that it's not you who is causing them. If it's a common situation that we expect to happen, then it'll be converted to a warning instead. Otherwise, it's possibly a bug that should be corrected, not silently ignored, assuming it's not a result of your own technical issue. For example, putting invalid content in ASF.json file will throw an error, as ASF won't be able to parse it, but it was you who put it there, so you should not report that error to us (unless you confirmed that ASF is wrong and your structure is in fact absolutely correct).
In one TL;DR sentence - report errors, don't report warnings. You can still ask about warnings and receive help in our support sections.
In normal conditions, any ASF crash or exit will generate a log.txt in the program's directory for you to view, which can be used for finding the cause of that. In addition to that, a few last log files are also archived in logs directory, since the main log.txt file is overwritten with each ASF run.
However, if even .NET runtime isn't able to boot on your machine, then log.txt will not be generated. If that happens to you then you most likely forgot to install .NET prerequisites, as stated in setting up guide. Other common problems include trying to launch wrong ASF variant for your OS, or in other way missing native .NET runtime dependencies. If the console window closes too soon for you to read the message, then open independent console and launch ASF binary from there. For example on Windows, open ASF directory, hold Shift, right click inside the folder and choose "open command window here" (or powershell), then type into the console .\ArchiSteamFarm.exe and confirm with enter. This way you'll get precise message why ASF is not starting properly.
This shows up as a message in Steam overlay that the account is being used somewhere else while you're playing. This issue can have two different reasons.
One reason is caused by broken packages (games) that specifically don't hold a playing lock properly, yet expect that lock to be possesed by the client. An example of such package would be Skyrim SE. Your Steam client launches the game properly, but that game doesn't register itself as being used. Because of that, ASF sees that it's free to resume the process, which it does, and that kicks you out of Steam network, as Steam suddenly detects that the account is being used in another place.
Second reason could come up if you're playing on your PC while ASF is waiting (especially on another machine) and you lose your network connection. In this case, Steam network marks you as offline and releases playing lock (like above), which triggers ASF (e.g. on another machine) into resuming farming. When your PC comes back online, Steam can't acquire playing lock anymore (that is now held by ASF, also similar to above) and shows the same message.
Both causes on the ASF side are actually very hard to workaround, as ASF simply resumes farming once Steam network informs it that account is free to be used again. This is what is happening normally when you close the game, but with broken packages this can happen immediately, even if your game is still running. ASF has no way to know whether you got disconnected, stopped playing a game or that you're still playing a game that doesn't hold playing lock appropriately.
The only proper solution to this problem is manually pausing your bot with pause before you start playing, and resuming it with resume once you're done. Alternatively you can just ignore the problem and act the same as if you played with offline Steam client.
ASF can only try to establish connection with Steam servers, and it can fail due to many reasons, including lack of internet connection, Steam being down, your firewall blocking connection, third-party tools, incorrectly configured routes or temporary failures. You can enable Debug mode to check out more verbose log stating exact failure reasons, although usually it's simply caused by your own actions, such as using "CS:GO MM Server Picker" that blacklists a lot of Steam IPs, making it very hard for you to actually reach Steam network.
ASF will do its best to establish connection, which includes not only asking about updated list of servers but also trying another IP when last one fails, so if it's truly a temporary problem with some specific server or route, ASF will connect sooner or later. However, if you're behind firewall or in some other way unable to reach Steam servers, then obviously you need to fix it yourself, with potential help of Debug mode.
It's also possible that your machine is not able to establish connection with Steam servers using default protocol in ASF. You can alter protocols that ASF is permitted to use by modifying SteamProtocols global configuration property. For example, if you have problems reaching Steam with UDP protocol (e.g. due to firewalls), perhaps you'll have more luck with TCP or WebSocket.
In a very unlikely situation of having incorrect servers being cached, for example because of moving ASF config folder from one machine to another machine located in entirely different country, deleting ASF.db in order to refresh Steam servers on the next launch may help. Very often it's not needed and doesn't have to be done, as that list is automatically refreshed on first launch, as well as when the connection is established - we're just mentioning it as a way to purge anything related to list of Steam servers cached by ASF.
Usually it means that you're using Steam parental PIN to access your account, yet you forgot to put it in ASF config. You must put valid PIN in SteamParentalCode bot config property, otherwise ASF will not be able to access most of web content, therefore will not be able to work properly. Head over to configuration in order to learn more about SteamParentalCode.
Other reasons include temporary Steam problem, network issue or likewise. If issue won't solve itself after several hours and you're sure that you configured ASF appropriately, feel free to let us know about that.
Usually it means that you're using Steam parental PIN to access your account, yet you forgot to put it in ASF config. You must put valid PIN in SteamParentalCode bot config property, otherwise ASF will not be able to access most of web content, therefore will not be able to work properly. Head over to configuration in order to learn more about SteamParentalCode.
If parental PIN is not the reason, then this is a most common error, and you should get used to that, it simply means that ASF sent a request to Steam Network, and didn't get a valid response, 5 times in a row. Usually it means that Steam is either down or is having some difficulties or maintenance - ASF is aware of such issues and you should not worry about them, unless they're happening constantly for longer than several hours, and other users do not have such problems.
How to check if Steam is being down? Steam Status is an excellent source of checking if Steam should be up, if you notice errors, especially related to Community or Web API, then Steam is having difficulties. You may want to leave ASF alone and let it do its job after a short while of downtime, or quit it and wait yourself.
That's however not always the case, as in some situations Steam issues may not be detected by Steam Status, for example such case happened when Valve broke HTTPS support for Steam Community 7th June 2016 - accessing SteamCommunity through HTTPS was throwing an error. Therefore, do not blindly trust Steam Status either, it's best to check yourself if everything works as supposed to.
In addition to that, Steam includes various rate-limiting measures which will temporarily ban your IP if you make excessive number of requests at once. ASF is aware of that and offers you several different limiters in the config, which you should make use of. Default settings were tweaked based on sane amount of bots, if you're using so huge amount that even Steam is telling you to go away, then you either tweak them until it no longer tells you to, or you do as you're told. I assume second way is not an option to you, so go read on that topic and pay special attention to WebLimiterDelay which is a general limiter that applies to all web requests.
There is no "golden rule" that works for everybody, because blocks are heavily influenced by third-party factors, that's why you have to experiment yourself and find a value that works for you. You can also ignore what I say and use something like 10000 which is guaranteed to work correctly, but then don't complain how your ASF reacts to everything in 10 seconds and how badge parsing takes 5 minutes. In addition to that, it's entirely possible that no limiter will do anything because you have so huge amount of bots that you're hitting hard limit that was mentioned above. Yes, it's entirely possible that you'll be able to log in without issues into Steam network (client), but Steam web (website) will refuse to listen to you if you have 100 sessions established at once. ASF requires both Steam network and Steam web to be cooperative, it takes just one down to make you issues you won't recover from.
If nothing helps and you have no clue what is broken, you can always enable Debug mode and see yourself in ASF log why exactly requests are failing. 範例：
InternalRequest() HEAD https://steamcommunity.com/my/edit/settings
InternalRequest() Forbidden <- HEAD https://steamcommunity.com/my/edit/settings
See that Forbidden code? This means that you got temporarily banned for excessive amount of requests, because you didn't tweak WebLimiterDelay properly yet (assuming you get the same error code for all other requests as well). There could be other reasons listed there, such as InternalServerError, ServiceUnavailable and timeouts that indicate Steam maintenance/issues. You can always try to visit the link mentioned by ASF yourself and check if it works - if it doesn't, then you know why ASF can't access that either. If it does, and the same error doesn't go away after a day or two, it may be worth investigating and reporting.
Before doing that you should make sure that the error is worth reporting in the first place. If it's mentioned in this FAQ, such as trading-related issue, then that's out. If it's temporary issue that happened once or twice, especially when your network was unstable or Steam was down - that's out. However, if you were able to reproduce your issue several times in a row, across 2 days, restarted ASF as well as your machine in the process and made sure that there is no FAQ entry here to help resolve it, then this may be worth asking about.
You're most likely using Windows and your console has QuickEdit mode enabled. Refer to this question on StackOverflow for technical explanation. You should disable QuickEdit mode by right clicking your ASF console window, opening properties, and unchecking appropriate checkbox.
Obvious thing first - new accounts start as limited. Until you unlock account by loading its wallet or spending $5 in the store, ASF can't accept neither send trades using this account. In this case, ASF will state that inventory seems empty, because every card that is in it is non-tradable. It also won't be possible to receive any trade, as that part requires ASF to be able to fetch API key, and API key functionality is disabled for limited accounts. In short - trading is off for all limited accounts, no exceptions.
Next, if you do not use ASF 2FA, it's possible that ASF in fact accepted/sent trade, but you need to confirm it via your e-mail. Likewise, if you use classic 2FA, you need to confirm the trade via your authenticator. Confirmations are mandatory now, so if you don't want to accept them by yourself, consider importing your authenticator into ASF 2FA.
Also notice that you can trade only with your friends, and people with known trade link. If you're trying to initiate Bot -> Master trade, such as loot, then you need to either have your bot on your friendlist, or your SteamTradeToken declared in Bot's config. Make sure that the token is valid - otherwise, you won't be able to send a trade.
Lastly, remember that new devices have 7-days trade lock, so if you've just added your account to ASF, wait at least 7 days - everything should work after that period. That limitation includes both accepting and sending trades. It does not always trigger, and there are people who can send and accept trades instantly. Majority of the people are affected though, and the lock will happen, even if you can send and accept trades through your steam client on the same machine. Just wait patiently, there's nothing you can do to make it faster. Likewise, you may get similar lock for removing/changing various Steam security-related settings, such as 2FA, SteamGuard, password, e-mail and likewise. In general, check if you can send a trade from that account yourself, if yes, very likely it's classic 7-days lock from new device.
And finally, keep in mind that one account can have only 5 pending trades to another one, so ASF will fail to send trades if you have 5 (or more) pending ones from that one bot to accept already. This is rarely a problem, but it's also worth mentioning, especially if you set ASF to auto-send trades, yet you're not using ASF 2FA and forgot to actually confirm them.
If nothing helped, you can always enable Debug mode and check yourself why requests are failing. Please note that Steam talks nonsense most of the time, and provided reason may not make any logical sense, or can be even entirely incorrect - if you decide to interpret that reason, make sure you have decent knowledge about Steam and its quirks. It's also quite common to see that issue with no logical reason, and the only suggested solution in this case is to re-add account to ASF (and wait 7 days again). Sometimes this issue also fixes itself magically, the same way it breaks. However, usually it's just either 7-days trade lock, temporary steam problem, or both. It's best to give it a few days before manually checking what is wrong, unless you have some urge to debug the real cause (and usually you'll be forced to wait anyway, because error message won't make any sense, neither help you in the slightest).
In any case, ASF can only try to send a proper request to Steam in order to accept/send trade. Whether Steam accepts that request, or not, is out of the scope of ASF, and ASF will not magically make it work. There's no bug related to that feature, and there is also nothing to improve, because logic is happening outside of ASF. Therefore, do not ask for fixing stuff that is not broken, and also do not ask why ASF can't accept or send trades - I don't know, and ASF doesn't know either. Either deal with it, or fix yourself, if you know better.
ASF uses login keys (if you kept UseLoginKeys enabled) for keeping credentials valid, the same mechanism that Steam uses - 2FA/SteamGuard token is required only once. However, due to Steam network issues and quirks, it's entirely possible that login key is not saved in the network, we've already seen such issues not only with ASF, but with regular steam client as well (a need to input login + password on each run, regardless of "remember me" option).
You could remove BotName.db and BotName.bin (if available) of affected account and try to link ASF to your account once again, but that likely won't do anything. Some users have reported that deauthorizing all devices on Steam side should help, changing password will do the same. However, those are only workarounds that are not even guaranteed to work, the real ASF-based solution is to import your authenticator as ASF 2FA - this way ASF can generate tokens automatically when they're needed, and you don't have to input them manually. Usually the issue magically solves itself after some time, so you can simply wait for that to happen. Of course you can also ask Valve for solution, because I can't force Steam network to accept our login keys.
As a side note, you can also turn off login keys with UseLoginKeys config property set to false, but this will not solve the problem, only skip the initial login key failure. ASF is already aware of the issue explained here and will try its best to not use login keys if it can guarantee itself all login credentials, so there is no need to tweak UseLoginKeys manually if you can provide all login details together with using ASF 2FA.
This error can mean a lot of things, some of them include:
- Invalid Login/Password combination (obviously)
- Expired login key used by ASF for logging in
- Too many failed login attempts in short period of time (anti-bruteforce)
- Too many login attempts in short period of time (rate-limiting)
- Requirement of captcha to log in (very likely to be caused by two reasons above)
- Any other reason Steam Network may have preventing you from logging in.
In case of anti-bruteforce and rate-limiting, problem will disappear after some time, so just wait and don't attempt to log in in the meantime. If you hit that issue frequently, perhaps it's wise to increase LoginLimiterDelay config property of ASF. Excessive program restarts and other intentional/non-intentional login requests definitely won't help with that issue, so try to avoid it if possible.
In case of expired login key - ASF will remove old one and ask for new one on next login (which will require from you putting 2FA token if your account is 2FA-protected. If your account is using ASF 2FA, token will be generated and used automatically). This can naturally happen over time, but if you get this issue on each login, it's possible that Steam for some reason decided to ignore our login key save requests, as mentioned in the issue above. You can of course disable UseLoginKeys entirely, but that won't solve the issue, only avoid a need of removing expired login keys each time. The real solution, as per the issue above, is to use ASF 2FA.
And lastly, if you used wrong login + password combination, obviously you need to correct this, or disable bot that is attempting to connect using those credentials. ASF can't guess on its own whether InvalidPassword means invalid credentials, or any of the reasons listed above, therefore it'll keep trying until it succeeds.
Keep in mind that ASF has its own built-in system to react accordingly to steam quirks, eventually it will connect and resume its job, therefore it's not required to do anything if the issue is temporary. Restarting ASF in order to magically fix problems will only make things worse (as new ASF won't know previous ASF state of not being able to log in, and try to connect instead of waiting), so avoid doing that unless you know what you're doing.
Finally, as with every Steam request - ASF can only try to log in, using your provided credentials. Whether that request will succeed or not is out of the scope and logic of ASF - there is no bug, and nothing can be fixed neither improved in this regard.
If this error happened during ASF input (e.g. you can see Console.ReadLine() in the stacktrace) then it's caused by your environment which prohibits ASF from reading standard input of your console. That can occur due to a lot of reasons, but the most common one is you running ASF in the wrong environment (e.g. in nohup or & background instead of screen on Linux). If ASF can't access its standard input, then you'll see this error logged and ASF's inability to use your details during runtime.
If you expect this to happen, so you intend to run ASF in input-less environment, then you should explicitly tell ASF that it's the case, by setting Headless mode appropriately. This will tell ASF to never ask for user input under any circumstance, allowing you to run ASF in input-less environments safely.
This error happens when ASF can't establish secure connection with given server, almost exclusively because of SSL certificate mistrust.
In almost all cases this error is caused by wrong date/time on your machine. Every SSL certificate has issued date and expiry date. If your date is invalid and out of those two bounds then the certificate can't be trusted due to a potential MITM attack and ASF refuses to make a connection.
Obvious solution is to set the date on your machine appropriately. It's highly recommended to use automatic date synchronization, such as native synchronization available on Windows, or ntpd on Linux.
If you made sure that the date on your machine is appropriate and the error doesn't want to go away, SSL certificates that your system trusts could be out-of-date or invalid. In this case you should ensure that your machine can establish secure connections, for example by checking if you can access https://github.com with any browser of your choice, or CLI tool such as curl. If you confirmed that this works properly, feel free to post issue on our Steam group.
This warning means that Steam did not answer to ASF request in given time. Usually it's caused by Steam networking hiccups and does not affect ASF in any way. In other cases it's the same as request failing after 5 tries. Reporting this issue makes no sense most of the time, as we can't force Steam to respond to our requests.
This problem is almost exclusively caused by disabled/stopped CNG Key Isolation Windows service, which provides core cryptography functionality for ASF, without which the program isn't able to run. You can fix this issue by launching services.msc and ensuring that CNG Key Isolation Windows service doesn't have disabled startup and is currently running.
Ensure that you downloaded ASF from trusted source. The only official and trusted source is ASF releases page on GitHub (and this is also the source for ASF auto-updates) - any other source is untrusted by definition and can contain malware added by other people - you should not trust any other download location by definition, and ensure that your ASF always comes from us.
If you confirmed that ASF is downloaded from trusted source, then very likely it's simply a false positive. This happened in the past, is happening right now, and will happen in the future. If you're worried about actual safety when using ASF, then I suggest scanning ASF with many different AVs for actual detection ratio, for example through VirusTotal (or any other web service of your choice like this).
If the AV that you're using falsely detects ASF as a malware, then it's a good idea to send this file sample back to developers of your AV, so they can analyze it and improve their detection engine, as clearly it's not working as good as you think it does. There is no issue in ASF code, and there is also nothing to fix for us, since we're not distributing malware in the first place, therefore it doesn't make any sense to report those false-positives to us. We highly recommend to send ASF sample for further analysis like stated above, but if you don't want to bother with it, then you can always add ASF to some kind of AV exceptions, disable your AV or simply use another one. Sadly, we're used to AVs being stupid, as every once in a while some AV detects ASF as a virus, which usually lasts very short and is being patched up quickly by the devs, but like we pointed out above - it happened, happens and will happen all the time. ASF doesn't include any malicious code, you can review ASF code and even compile from source yourself. We're not hackers to obfuscate ASF code in order to hide from AV heuristics and false positives, so do not expect from us to fix what is not broken - there is no "virus" for us to fix.
