Valheim Dedicate Server no longer available anonymously via SteamCMD

[KKiONI]

I'm using LinuxGSM to manage a dedicated server and I noticed for the last 2 days my server has been failing to check for updates nightly.

I dug into it today and found out it is unable to pull up the build numbers with this command:

./steamcmd.sh +login anonymous '' +app_info_update 1 +app_info_print 896660 +quit

Output:

Connecting anonymously to Steam Public...OK
Waiting for client config...OK
Waiting for user info...OK
No app info for AppID 896660 found, requesting...

It's logging in anonymously, so I tried with my own Steam account and it was able to successfully return the app info.

Next thing I wondered was whether it is a Steam thing or a Valheim thing. So I tested it anonymously with the Team Fortress 2 dedicated server app ID (232250) and it returned info as well.

So from what I can see, it appears the Valheim Dedicated Server application is no longer available anonymously. @IronGate can this be fixed, pretty please?

Update 1: Tested with a dummy account that doesn't own the game and it cannot see the info either. So it looks like the dedicated server is restricted to those who own the game now.

Update 2: Looks like the issue started 4 days ago according to Steam DB's history:
https://steamdb.info/app/896660/history/

[Soturi]

So, I've made this work but it's super janky. As far as I can tell this isn't specific to Valheim as it also shows up for Conan Exiles' dedicated server too so I'm blaming steamcmd.

I haven't figured out how to reliably automate this but these are my observations with steamcmd running in one window and inotifywait running in a second window so I can see when steamcmd writes out data.

This is my inotifywait command:

>$ inotifywait --monitor --recursive --event close_write --event moved_to ~/Steam/appcache/
> Setting up watches. Beware: since -r was given, this may take a while!
> Watches established.
> /home/steam/Steam/appcache/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE appinfo.vdf.temp
> /home/steam/Steam/appcache/ MOVED_TO appinfo.vdf

I do a login and then the app_info_update just as you do. Then I loop through the servers I'm building containers for, running app_info_print and noting which ones trigger a "No app info for AppId x found, requesting ..." message. When I get to the end of the list I go back and retry the failed ones and, generally, on the second pass I get data. Not always though, occasionally I get back null records that look like:

> AppID : 896660, change number : 0/0, last change : Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970
"896660"
> {
> }

If I end up with a null record I quit out of steamcmd, delete the appinfo.vdf file and restart.

On a good run, after the app_info_update and then the sequence of app_info_print commands, I'll see inotifywait reporting an additional MOVED_TO appinfo.vdf event for each appid that needed a separate request.

Like I said, super janky but the data are still there but frustrating to get at.

[KKiONI]

You're probably right that it's not specific to Valheim.

The SteamDB history for Valheim shows it being removed from a collection called "Anonymous Dedicated Server Comp":
https://steamdb.info/sub/17906/history/

It's showing a massive amount of dedicated servers being removed for various games. Sampling a few games from that list, they all appear to have this attribute added:

freetodownload = 1

Which is a little confusing since one would think 1 == true.

I'm going to take a stab at opening a support ticket with Steam and see where that takes me.

[TwentyPast4]

Deleting steamapps where the server is running fixed it for me. I had just valheim there, so I deleted the whole folder, possible that you could get away with only deleting the valheim specific folder & cache.

[MaCarBre]

It just started working for me yesterday, without doing anything specific.