I've never heard of a Steam ban for running a pirated game that uses cracked steam_api.dll. The whole point of the cracked .dll is that it doesn't communicate with Steam anymore.
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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You won't get banned if you properly apply the crack. It won't contact the steam servers anymore.
I'm not certain, but perhaps some games are pre-cracked. For instance, some from that girl who's fit.
I know you’re trying to be delicate, but all this information we’re sharing is publicly accessible and likely indexed by something so you just end up making the conversation harder to follow
Just my 2 cents
I know. You're right. It's just an old habit.
10+ year steam account. 10+ years of pirating.
If you start a game that isn't cracked or doesn't have a crack applied, Steam will pop up and say you don't own that.
Never have gotten as much as a warning for that ever.
If a game already has a crack applied. You don't have to worry about bans ever. The whole point is to not communicate with the servers and let you play the game.
Steam emulators like Goldberg work in very much the same way. Except now you can "crack" most games with a simple dll change.
Ideally you'd boot into a separate OS without internet connection, or if it's checking for that, log into a secondary steam account not linked to your original one in any way.
So sandbox completely? That's doable. I imagine to have a Steam account completely separate from your primary account, you'd need to never share libraries and avoid matching IPs. Do you think Steam looks at hardware MAC addresses?
At that point why don't you just play a pirated version on the game lol it seems like less of a hassle
I agree with you there. I usually just want to try out the game before I buy the real deal. I don't do too much online stuff these days, but occasionally I want to jump into a game with a friend and thus need my Steam account.
Windows 10 already gives you the inhouse option to randomize MACs, and I believe it's even switched on by default. So even if they check it, it probably wouldn't do any good. Doubt IP addresses matter since plenty of people use a VPN or shared connections in a house with multiple occupants, student dorm and whatnot, so I don't think they link those.