SteamID

A SteamID is a unique identifier used to identify a Steam account. It is also used to refer to a user's Steam Community profile page.

Format

As Represented Textually

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

• X represents the "Universe" the steam account belongs to.
• Y is part of the ID number for the account. Y is either 0 or 1.
• Z is the ID number for the account (the "account number").

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.

• The low 32 bits represents the ID number for the account (the "account number").
• The next 20 bits represents the instance of the account. It is usually set to 1 for user accounts.
• The next 4 bits represents the type of account.
• The next 8 bits represents the "Universe" the steam account belongs to.

Universes Available for Steam Accounts

There are 8 universes of Steam accounts.

Number	Type
0	Individual / Unspecified
1	Public
2	Beta
3	Internal
4	Dev
5	RC

Types of Steam Accounts

There are ten known account types for a Steam account, of which only 3 can be created today.

Number	Letter	Type	Can Be Used?	URL Path (default / custom)	SteamID64 Identifier
0		Invalid	No
1	U	Individual	Yes	profiles / id	0x0110000100000000
2		Multiseat	Yes
3		GameServer	Yes
4		AnonGameServer	Yes
5		Pending	No
6		ContentServer	Unknown
7	g	Clan	Yes	groups / gid	0x0170000000000000
8	T	Chat	Yes
9		P2P SuperSeeder	No
10		AnonUser	No

Users of an 'Individual' 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 Steam'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 and accounts which do not belong to another class.

Steam ID as a Steam Community ID

A Steam ID can be converted to Steam Community ID for use on the Steam Community website.

Let X, Y and Z constants be defined by the SteamID: STEAM_X:Y:Z.

There are 2 methods of conversion:

For 32-bit systems

Using the formula W=Z*2+Y, a SteamID can be converted to the following link:

http or https://steamcommunity.com/path/[letter:1:W]

The account type letter can be found in the table above. The path can be found in the same place after the slash symbol.

Example: http://steamcommunity.com/gid/[g:1:4]

For 64-bit systems

Let V be SteamID64 identifier of the account type (can be found in the table above in hexadecimal format).

Using the formula W=Z*2+V+Y, a SteamID can be converted to the following link:

http or https://steamcommunity.com/path/W

As for the 32-bit method, the path can be found in the table above, again after the slash.

Example: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197960287930

Steam Community ID as a Steam ID

Using the reverse methods, a Community ID can be converted to a regular SteamID. The value of Z can be retrieved by checking parity of the number W: if it's even, Y is 0, if it's odd, Y is 1 (shortly, Y is the remainder of division of W by 2, or the result of binary AND operation with number 1).

The SteamID64 (64-bit SteamID) of Steam Community members can be found in several places:

• Players:
  • In profile->steamID64 element of profile XML schema (can be opened by appending ?xml=1 to profile URL).
  • In the "Add to your friends list" link (not recommended to be used in applications that login with username and password).
• Groups: in the "Enter chat room" link.

Caveat about Cyber Café Accounts

Although it would appear sensible for Valve to put all cybercafé account SteamID's in their own universe, this has not been done. Instead, cybercafé accounts got SteamID's in the same universe as user accounts, typically from a large pool of SteamID's where the unique ID part lies within the range 7000000 and 8000000. There are also non cybercafé accounts within this range and cybercafé accounts outside of 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.

The value of X is 0 in VALVe's GoldSrc and Source Orange Box Engine games (For example, Counter Strike: Source), but newer Valve games such as Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2 and Alien Swarm have 1 as a value of X. The value of Y is either 0 or 1 and is part of the Account ID as described above. This bit used to indicate which authentication server was used by that account.

External links

• SteamID.co.uk - Tools to look up players, items, games ,friends, groups and so much more
• Legit-Proof.com - Search engine to look up players and teams from all steam_id based games and more.
• SteamIDFinder.com - Tool to let players quickly look up their SteamID without launching a game.
• getSteamID - A standalone tool for Windows to look up all SteamIDs found on a local computer which were used in the past by different users.
• SteamID.com - Search engine to lookup competitive Counter-Strike players by their SteamID.
• VACBanned.com - Search engine to lookup the VAC status of a SteamID, and add the banned SteamIDs to a database.
• SteamProfile.co.uk - A tool which generates links to lookup profiles on multipole API sites