SteamID

A SteamID is a unique identifier used to identify a single account on the Steam platform. It is also used to refer to a Steam user's Steam Community profile page, but this article does not cover the latter usage.

The SteamID replaces the WonID, previously used when "Half-Life" CD key checks were done through the WON service. SteamIDs are, at the moment, mainly used by Half-Life and its numerous modifications (such as Counter-Strike), as well as games based on the Source engine (such as Half-Life 2).

The SteamID Format

As Represented Textually

SteamIDs follow a fairly simple format when represented textually: "STEAM_X:Y:Z", where X, Y and Z are natural numbers. In select cases "STEAM_ID_PENDING" or "UNKNOWN" are used (see the section 'Types of Steam Accounts' for more details).

As Represented in Computer Programs

When represented internally in computer programs the X, Y and Z components (see the section titled 'As Represented Textually') are all packed into a 64-bit data structure. Using the format described above:

*X represents the "Universe" the steam account belongs to (which is identified by an unsigned 8-bit value)
*Y represents the type of account and is represented as an unsigned 4-bit value
*Z is the unique ID number for the account (the "account number") identified by a 32-bit unsigned value

The remaining 20 bits are used to represent the 'instance' of this account and only applies for a special type of account called a 'Multiseat' account (an account for which many users can log into at the same time, for instance at Cybercafes).

Universes Available for Steam Accounts

There are 8 universes of Steam accounts.

Types of Steam Accounts

There are eight known account types for a Steam account, of which only 4 can be created today.

Users of an 'Individual' or 'Invalid' (unspecified) account are temporarily referred to as having a 'Pending' account which have a textual representation of "STEAM_ID_PENDING" until their account credentials are verified with the Steam service's authentication servers, a process usually complete by the time a server is fully connected to. Accounts of the type 'Invalid' have a textual representation of "UNKNOWN" and are used for 'bots' (reported for NPCs) and accounts which do not belong to another class.

Caveat about Cyber Café Accounts

Although it would appear sensible for Valve to put all Cyber Café account SteamID's in their own universe, this has not been done. Instead, Cyber Café accounts receive a new SteamID on each authentication with the Steam authentication servers, typically from a large pool of SteamID's where the unique ID part lies within the range 7000000 and 8000000. There may be non Cyber-Café accounts within this range.

SteamID Uses

Aside from the obvious elements of identifying (uniquely) an account, its type and the domain (universe) it belongs to, SteamIDs can be used to approximately determine when the user associated with the SteamID first created that Steam account. Lower values of 'Z' in the format described above (i.e. the account number) indicate an account made further in the past to one with a higher value. For example, a SteamID like STEAM_0:0:1234 would mean that the user signed up for their Steam account a long time before a user with a SteamID such as STEAM_0:0:12341111.

External links

* [http://www.legit-proof.com Legit-Proof.com] - Search engine to look up players and teams from all steam_id based games and more.
* [http://www.mysteamid.com MySteamID.com] - Tool to let players quickly look up their SteamID without launching a game.
* [http://www.beiheringzuheim.de/?site=projects&project=getsteamid getSteamID] - An external standalone tool for Windows to retrieve all SteamIDs found on a local computer, which were used before.
* [http://www.steamid.com SteamID.com] - Search engine to lookup competitive Counter-Strike players by their SteamID.

References

Valve's C++ code header files (notably the declararion of the CSteamID class, located in the "~/public/steam/steamclientpublic.h" header file). This is distributed as part of the Source SDK - downloadable via the Steam client which itself can be obtained from http://www.steampowered.com.

Related Pages

* Steam