Farming Steam cards: Idle Master Extended, ArchiSteamFarm, and Steam Game Idler automate card collection without launching games, saving you time and effort.
On consoles, you get achievements, but on Steam, there are trading cards. They let you craft unique badges, level up your Steam account, or even make money by selling them.
Usually, cards drop while you play, but this process can be automated so you get all the cards without ever launching a game.
Idle Master Extended (Windows)
Idle Master Extended is a fork of another well-known project (Idle Master). The original project was discontinued, and IME took its place.
To get started, you’ll need to launch Steam and connect the utility to it. The authorization process isn’t very straightforward and requires extracting data from cookies.
Once authorized, you can choose a game from the list that supports card farming, or add any game manually via a whitelist.
In the settings, you can adjust some parameters, such as preventing your PC from going to sleep, changing the farming type, or its order.
ArchiSteamFarm (Windows, macOS, Linux)
ArchiSteamFarm is a console utility for farming cards, but it can also help with grabbing free licenses and items, as well as simplifying trading.
Configuration can be done manually or automatically, but either way you’ll need instructions — and even with them, setup isn’t trivial.
If you manage to set it up, you’ll be able to farm cards even without having the Steam client installed. The utility also supports custom plugins.
Steam Game Idler (Windows)
If the above utilities seem too much of a hassle to configure, Steam Game Idler finally provides a proper interface.
If Steam is running, authorization happens with a single click, and you’ll instantly see which games are available for farming.
The tool lets you not only farm cards but also unlock achievements. Everything is done as easily and conveniently as possible.