Do you even idle, bro?
Does not to best of my knowledge atm. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ascfarm/discussions/6/133258593384919684/
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How ?
ASF is just connecting and idling to Steam network while you don't play any game, while it doesn't interact at all with system and other software memory space.
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But for Valve it's just you being AFK in a game, because that's what ASF is basically doing (if I'm not mistaken).
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TikiOne Steam Cleaner is more aggressive than CCleaner. I have never had troubles with either one and VAC games. My 4200+ hours playing Day of Defeat: Source is proof of that. None of the people that I play with have ever mentioned it either. I'm not sure why they list CCleaner as something that will break VAC unless VAC is different for their other games that have it.
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Whaaaat? How do they even justify that? How could CCleaner do anything to your games in the first place. D:
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Huh, never heard of that before. I guess I'd better make sure CCleaner is turned off whenever I play VAC from now on...
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It is odd, but it happens... Only seen it with indie games thus far, so I would say it's safe to assume that the devs aren't the best programmers and don't know of better ways to store and load data for use across sessions (it's better to store it in a text file, but they fail to do that somehow)... And implementing VAC is actually quite easy, so they can manage that while failing other things...
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it's better to store it in a text file, but they fail to do that somehow
Which is surprising, because that is actually really easy (at least with C#, I've not done it in other languages yet). Using the registry on the other hand is actually a bit more difficult (and there is a lot less info on that as well)...
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It is very easy, yea... But there's a large amount of extremely easy "do it yourself game making kits" out there these days with a lot of premade modules for them, including Unity as the worst offender and RPGMaker not far behind (don't get me wrong though, there are great games made with both, but they have a very low skill floor). This means the threshold has been lowered from "has to know the basics of programming" to "has to be able to copy/paste", which means creating a custom text file might actually be above their skill level and there happens to be a built in feature to store things in the registry (intended for game settings, probably)...
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Good point. If you have no programming knowledge you might not know what would be the best thing to do. And even if you try to look it up, it might look incredibly complicated (I know I thought it was hard to understand when I first encountered things like StreamReader). I guess it's easy for me to say it's easy, since programming is basically my life now...
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Never had a VAC when I played CSGO and Ccleaner was in background the whole time. Once or twice I also used it while playing because I didn't know about the VAC.
I'm not saying not to ba careful (and I've been more careful ever since I discovered), but i don't think it's so EASY to be VACed with Ccleaner.
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as long as you're not running it while playing, you're fine, the new update just disconnects you from VAC if "unauthorized" changes to the game files occur while playing VAC-protected games
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yes, if you run VAC enabled game, you are risking to be disconnected by VAC. Possibly banned, but I can't confirm or deny it.
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That doesn't really matter, as very, very, very ELI5 version: If ASF.exe = on, then VACban-warning, as one of the things VAC look for are what programs are running in background, sometimes without caring how they are used.
And no, renaming ASF.exe to totally_not_asf.exe will not be enough :P
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It might be new addon to VAC-search, so it might not cause troubles before.
VAC is a big beast that isn't really documented (obviously, as to not give cheaters ways to go around it), we know it scans memory for various stuff, both just names/signatures of various programs and also much more complicated stuff like if what happens on screen is impossible to be done by real human (like cursor not moving from left bottom to top right corner, but instead it it teleports there).
We don't really know what they look for when they say "steam idlers", maybe ASF is actually safe as they only go after oldest steam idler - Steam Achievement Manager? Or maybe ASF is the only one they hunt for, because it is running steam.exe in "different PC", which kinda is same thing as sandboxie?
One way or another, I would suggest not starting ASF.exe along with csgo.exe (or any other vacgame.exe) - you probably won't get ban, but you will have to restart steam or even whole PC after you get that VAC-warning I linked before.
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Hunting for ASF doesn't make any sense - I'm running it on my Linux server where Steam is not being installed at all. VAC doesn't go that far, one of the reasons why ASF is VAC-free by definition, since it doesn't require Steam client being running or even installed at all.
If they wanted to get rid of ASF, they'd contact me, or start building defense mechanism right in the Steam network, since this is the only thing with which ASF interacts.
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Well, idling/messing around with games and/or Steam while playing VAC-secure games is pretty silly. :P
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PowerShell (including Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core) is a task automation and configuration management framework from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and associated scripting language built on the .NET Framework
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There is no default. Also when needed win uses CMD
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If anyone plays CSGO they've probably had the "An issue with your computer is blocking the VAC system" error before as this has been around for the last few years and happens all the time while playing games like CSGO. People get kicked from the game then it sends you to the link which you've linked so that you can fix the problem. The reason you get kicked is because something is blocking Vac from working. It could be quite a few things which cause the error.
I don't think it has any effect on idling it's just that it could be one of the reasons of you being kicked from a Vac enabled game if idling while playing. I wouldn't run any third party programs while playing any Vac enabled game any way just to be safe. :D
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I had that damn error while trying to play TF2 and the problem lasted for almost a year before I figured it out. I wasn't idling or anything. It turns out it was because TF2 and Steam were installed on an encrypted hard drive. I had to install both to an unencrypted drive/partition before it would stop kicking me out of TF2. I never got this error with L4D2 or CSGO even though they were both installed on the same drive.
This took months of going back and forth with steam support and only after I happened to mention that TF2 was installed on an encrypted drive and they said to install it to an unencrypted one. But that alone didn't work without the Steam client also being installed on an unencrypted drive which they didn't mention at first. So solving this was very annoying.
I also realized installing Steam to an encrypted drive made a mod for Just Cause 2 to stop working. I didn't understand why it worked at first and then when I returned to the game months later it would crash the game everytime when loading the main menu.
So apparently Steam and some games don't like being on encrypted drives.
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It's a tough error to find, I'd played CS since day one of Steam and never had any problems then after 11 years it started appearing. After doing me own digging trying to fix the problem I noticed that each time I verified the game cache it always fixed DirectX. So each time I had the error I'd just reinstall the DirectX from the install folder and everything would work again.
A few times it never worked so I'd have to go through their work through which by now had collected data from people having the problem, only other thing which I used was CCleaner (all settings turn on) but I used it every day while others said it was causing their problems it never seemed to affect me.
I still get the problem from time to time even while watching the Majors through CSGO which is weird as I'm not actually on any game server so Vac shouldn't have any problems. It's a weird error and one which I don't think will go away easy.
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I stopped using CCleaner years ago when I realized it was doing more harm then good.
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Powershell? Seriousle? What are we going to do when they delete CMD from Windows 10 in the next updates?
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Delete cmd? that would be stupid, but its microsoft
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Already deleted on Insider previews, forcing to use Powershell instead. It's basically the same but better.
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its not the same. it also needs more linux aliases for commands. learning powershell its kinda useless for me
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ok, i read the news and had a look over the preview. CMD is not going to be deleted, the just changed the default to powershell
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Do you have a special set up or some other trick because normally ASF should automatically stop idling that account when you're playing a game ;)
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While not idling anything, it will run app 753 for hours, and sometimes I got disconnected because ASF using my account while I using it. :P
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ascfarm/discussions/1/133257636767280210/
Probably related, but I'm not sure about it
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Interesting. I've never had that myself but I understand the potential issue now.
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As I recently found out my internet is too slow to host SharePlay on PS4 (strangely playing Watch Dogs 2 when my friend was hosting SharePlay worked fine) but luckily it suffices for streaming videos and most Steam related things.
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ASF randomly starts idling while I am playing a game, making Steam show an error that my account connected from another location and I am thrown offline until I log back in again. I found that incredibly annoying since ASF is supposed to auto-off (and it generally does) but when I use a gamepad ASF seems to think the lack of keyboard and mouse use means I am not doing anything. (Like old screen savers used to do). Now I make sure ASF is closed when I am playing a game, sadly this was the whole point of using ASF over IM because I was always worried I would forget to turn it off before playing a secured game.
Edit: This happens constantly for me not just every once in a while.
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Edit: This happens constantly for me not just every once in a while.
This will happen if you have unstable connection that will result in your Steam client being disconnected from Steam network, releasing game lock that you acquired. There is no solution for this, as I still want ASF to automatically resume idling when somebody does finish a game in legit way, so the only suggestion for this would be to pause/exit ASF at the time of playing, or playing in offline mode.
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It shouldn't be unstable, I don't use Wifi, and it is a direction connection to the almost brand new modem (fibre). Can't really play offline when playing an online game and I don't tend to get kicked/dropped from online games which I assume I would be if my connection was dropping out. As mentioned, I have just been exiting ASF every time, but I liked the idea that I wouldn't have to do that. That I could just leave it running on my server (also direct connected to one of the ports on the modem, not wifi) and never having to think about it. Also tried running it on my machine (to see if for some reason running it off the server was the issue) but it didn't help. It's a great tool though, so I appreciate your effort so thank you for that. I did try reinstalling it and remaking the profiles ensuring I was not messing anything up by following the wiki and in tool guide.
TL;DR: I wasn't trying to say it is impossible for my connection to be unstable, just that it hasn't really been showing other signs of it. If it is unstable, I am going to be very disappointed because this was supposed to be an upgrade to their prior discontinued service.
Edit: Would it be possible (for those of us that might have unstable connections apparently) to have an optional double check system option. Ie. ASF detects the player may have stopped playing, wait 15s/30s/60s and check again. If still not locked, resume. I'm not sure how long a server will let you disconnect for before booting you in most online games, but I assume it can't be longer than 60s so any instability I (and others) may be experiencing can't be lasting longer than a few seconds at most.
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Thank you, I see you added this in the latest release!
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I did not play 100% Orange Juice again after I got IdleMaster. :(
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Valve spent a very long time avoiding answering questions about whether they permitted idling software or not. I'm just noting that they finally broke silence on that, and confirmed that they view it as acceptable, by the manner in which they just presented it.
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And when they do, it's either crazy delayed or utterly nonsensical. :P
Hence why this is so unusual. :'P
Though they've gone against things within their FAQ so many times that it really still doesn't mean anything. :X
It's interesting, nonetheless. :)
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Sooth deducing to reduce a bit of news to a useful truth.
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I wasn't even aware one could run idling software while playing a game. Or would that be idling an alt account while playing a game on a main account? Either way, I only ever idle when I'm not playing or even only when I'm fully disconnected from Steam. :)
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Idlemaster permitted running a game while idling. Since it was hooked into the Steam client, it would be the same as starting two games through the client. I would guess that the hook that it used is what gets picked up by the VAC system. There are still a lot of people using Idlemaster even though it was discontinued last year..
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There are still a lot of people using Idlemaster even though it was discontinued last year..
There's this bug/feature, when you close some games you instantly get card. Thanks to that, just by starting IM and doing few "next game, next game, next game" you can idle all your cards in few minutes instead of ASF hours.
If you're lucky to get that bug.
So. professional idler should first use IM to quickly run through his library of games and after he stops getting cards that way, run ASF for whatever didn't bug.
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Said bug is on Steam's end and as such if you have it set up right you can do the same with ASF or even manually if you have the games installed.
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Who idles while playing Vac enabled servers? (Or while playing period?)
ASF stops idling the moment you start playing by default so this doesn't affect it.
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From what I collect, the issue might be with the software running (ASF.exe), not the action of idling by itself. Even while not idling, ASF still may do other steam related actions, such as accepting incoming trades.
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I used to, at least until until reach 2 hours :X
Just a way to optimize time
Never heard about someone banned for it, everyone said it was safe so I thought it was
But now I'll be careful
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Idling games that use VAC was always safe as VAC applies to servers not the games themselves. Whilst there were no reports of bans for idling whilst also connected to a VAC secured server that was always advised against.
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Not 100% true, I've met with several packets indicating VAC offline scan triggered by Steam client itself, with no game running whatsoever. I don't want to spread panic since it's pretty rare and I'm not sure why it happens, but it exists, and I'd not risk using anything that can trigger VAC when using Steam alone.
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From what I have been told (so it might be completely wrong) that has something to do with CSGO aka if you dont own CSGO that doesnt happen.
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Ah, network packet, I should learn to read >.> I was thinking something else.
But yea VAC can do very weird and sometimes amusing things.
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I never idled while playing anyway. I think what you're saying is nothing new? I remember ppl talking about this a year ago or so.
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My idling programs are on a different PC than my gaming PC, so no worries.
The page lists virtual machines as well, and I usually keep them on while playing other games, so nothing really to worry about anyways.
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and we authorize you to use it.
That part is quite a stretch. But feel free to interpret it that way if you like :).
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https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2117-ilzv-2837
From now on you will get VAC warnings and disconnects while playing VAC games if you run famous idling software. It may not VAC ban you, but can render game unplayable for some time. Idle carefully!
EDIT: From Steam Support:
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