100
Linux
6y

*Showerthoughts*

Steam downloads games over plaintext, so can I whireshark a game and get it for free then?

*Showerthoughts*

Comments
  • 5
    For real?
  • 21
    @gitpush
    I dont know about the whireshark part but it is downloading stuff over http :)
  • 2
    Daheck.

    Question is, how does steam handle games using their api but not registered in your library?
  • 8
    it may have a internal encryption instead of ssl
  • 16
    Some good showers you are having, I see.
  • 2
    It's done like that so that the nodes in the path to your computer can cache the data.
    One can't cache connections over https.
  • 4
    Fetch the URL from Wireshark, fire up wget, fetch the file.. profit $$
    (No idea if it'll work though, I'm not a Steam user)
  • 6
    I mean technically you could install it this way. You'll still need a steam account that has said game registered under your account before you can run it though.

    Source : have tried to bum steam games off friends before without luck
  • 2
    You'll probably want to send authentication headers with it... ;)
  • 4
    That is what greenluma and other hacked steam clients do. And downloading the game is not protected. Playing it is.
    There is also a squid proxy setup that caches steam games. I have used that in a lan party it worked great :D
  • 1
    @gitcherry
    Yeah Squid works because it is over http :)

    @mngr
    Yeah, that is probably the case. It is somekind of .part format
  • 4
    Isn't this the same as just copying the downloaded files?
  • 2
    @cvonderstein
    Yeah it is :p
  • 2
    Well, Steam games aren't locked to a certain account. You could log in with another account, and if any game in your library was already installed, it would be playable. When launching a game it connects to the Steam launcher to verify your identity (and possibly also the game integrity)
  • 1
    And then there are also those games which use BattleEye, which complicates shit even further. Would be fun to try though.
  • 1
    Same as downloading a torrent of it, if it's not NoSteam'd you won't have much luck with it, also easier to just mitm steam cache proxies, many gaming cafes iirc use those.
  • 3
    @ScriptCoded try to remove the owner account then it will bitch at you that you're not the owner of said game, has happened before, both in owned and downloaded games.
  • 2
    @JoshBent Haha, didn't know that, but thanks for the heads up! 😅
  • 2
    @ScriptCoded haha steam is a bitch when it comes to that, have seen a lot about it, because I once tried to offline copy all games that I own 😁
  • 3
    @JoshBent It was better before. Nowadays when playing those old ported games, they will close if you stop Steam. Back in the days they didn't and you could play on a LAN and just buy it once 😅
  • 3
    @JoshBent But like a portable install?
  • 3
    @ScriptCoded the good old DRM free times 😶
  • 3
    @JoshBent Hehe... 🙈 Open Source ftw, right?
  • 1
    Yhee it's pretty useful for big lan partys. They add cache servers so they don't lose bandwidth because everybody is downloading the same game
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