steam-hour-farmer is a program that emulates you playing a game on Steam, with the purpose of effortlessly getting hours played on certain games on your profile.

• Can be deployed on a VPS to run 24/7.
• Only requires the games to be in your Steam library - they don't need to be installed.
• When you start playing games on your main computer, it pauses automatically.
• After you're finished playing, the bot resumes automatically (provided it's able to log in again).
• Doesn't require multiple accounts.
• Inspired by @Gunthersuper/steam-idle-bot.

1. Have Node.js configured (minimum version 16). This can be done through nvm on a VPS or through the official website.

2. Install this package:

   npm install -g steam-hour-farmer
   

3. Make a directory somewhere. This is where your Steam data will be stored, and where you can configure the bot.

4. Find your Steam game ids. In each game, go to Properties -> Updates -> Copy the App ID.

5. In this directory, make an .env file with the content:

   ACCOUNT_NAME="your_steam_username"
   PASSWORD="your_steam_password"
   GAMES="440,4000"

   This will start playing Team Fortress 2 and Garry's Mod for example.

   The GAMES part of the file describes what games you'd like the bot to play, separated by a comma. You can also include a non-Steam game name, for example:

   GAMES="Hello World,440,400"

   Additionally, a PERSONA value may be supplied to set the online status of the user. Can be Online (1), Busy (2), Away (3), Snooze (4). For example,

   PERSONA="1"

   to be Online. Do not write this value if you don't want the user's presence to change.

   All of this configuration can be passed via environment variables too - they don't need to be in this .env file.

6. Run the program in the same directory:

   steam-hour-farmer
   

SHARED_SECRET="xxxxxxxxxx"

When the bot starts, it will request a Steam Guard code via email or the mobile application. When you start playing on another machine, the bot will be kicked from its session, requiring a re-login, with a new Steam Guard code.

This can be remedied by using the Steam Shared Secret, or disabling Steam Guard.

Note that the playtime might seem to be the same when looking from another client - it can take a couple hours for Steam to refresh it sometimes.

To run the program in the background, multiple methods can be followed. These include:

• Using PM2 (this is what I use)
• Creating a Systemd service
• Using GNU Screen