Space war?? what is this

[arc361]

On my profile you should see a recently played game called space war. If you select it, it doesnt take you to any game. What is this? I havent played "Space war" before.

Apparently its an old secret steam game but I havent played it before and have no idea why its on my profile

[Crazy Tiger]

Your game details are set to private, we can't see them.

[Runkel]

It's a Game ID used by Pirated Games to bypass Steams protection. It means you played a Pirated Game.

Edit:

https://kotaku.com/thousands-of-people-are-playing-a-hidden-steam-game-1795315575
https://www.quora.com/How-is-Spacewar-used-to-pirate-games-on-Steam

[AmsterdamHeavy]

Its one of the first vector graphic video games. Valve had it as a free game for the 40th anniversary, if I remember right.

Ive heard that people somehow use it as a way to cover abusing Steam somehow. Like playing games they shouldnt or something, I dont know.

I have loaded it and played it, and it is indeed Space War that I played in arcades as a kid in the 70s.

[arc361]

Pirated game? um? What? I havent pirated a single game. Trust me my wallet is dwindling.

[arc361]

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

Your game details are set to private, we can't see them.

I removed the privacy settings.

[arc361]

The only thing I have done thats "sketchy" was buy games on a grey market website. With that said I havent purchased anything there in ages. I stopped when I tried preordering destiny 2 and didnt get the game. I was able to refund which was good because that game was garbage

[wuddih]

primarily this is the example game that explains the steamworks api to developers.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/api/example

how this game is embedded into the system it allows exploitation by pirates as already mentioned and that is the most common reasons this game pops up as played on an account.

you know what you did. everyone else can just interpret.

[arc361]

Originally posted by wuddih:

primarily this is the example game that explains the steamworks api to developers.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/api/example

how this game is embedded into the system it allows exploitation by pirates as already mentioned and that is the most common reasons this game pops up as played on an account.

you know what you did. everyone else can just interpret.

I don't? thats the thing. May 19th I played d3 all day, I launched poe to see if I can drag some of my friends off that game. So I literally have no idea what that game is for. It says 0 hours too so what does that mean.

Oh one thing I did do was download an external mod loader for Total warhammer 2 since the launcher for that game messes up mods but that couldnt of been before poe..

You give me these links on how people mess with the steam api but that stuff is beyond comprehension. I just play games.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

No.

[sePL80]

I assume that the modloader that you downloaded is somehow malicuous. Or it was programmed using this Space War example api and it was not done correctly.

[Walach]

Some mods for example "Total War: Warhammer" that doesn't use their new launcher uses "Space War" for something which is way above my understanding for like one second to launch themselves. So I guess other games also have similar mods loaded in the same way?

[8ullfrog]

Huh, weird that someone with legit API access would use a hook like that.

[76561198119618015]

If you have Fate/EXTELLA you can test it yourself, when you select Play on steam, you have 2 options you can choose either to Play Fate/EXTELLA or Launch Configuration Tool, both uses the same file game.exe (you can check in Task Manager as well to confirm) and both also will make the time played go up, but difference is you are not actually playing the game when you select Launch Configuration Tool, but I guess steam is only just looking for which .exe you are running to make the time tick/recently played game etc.

In this case, if you are using a custom launcher or custom game.exe to start your game I guess this could happen that it shows you are playing a different game on steam instead, and main reason you are using a custom launcher its because of how the file have been coded to load/read installed mods from steam workshop/community or whatever (which you stated in your previous posts).

You can run a test to see if it is indeed that Warhammer file, try running it and let it sit, I assume running it would sit at a display showing you what mods are loaded and you can select which to load or not load? If there is such a display sit on it for a few minutes and see if the timer played goes up.

[wuddih]

Originally posted by 8ullfrog:

Huh, weird that someone with legit API access would use a hook like that.

the modder has no access to use the publisher api of that game, that is required.
if the mod is not using the game itself and loads/injects/emulates whatever into the game but still requires to use the Steam api for doing some stuff, then the modder has a reason to take the easy route, the other costs money.

there are a few mods that take the spacewar or other shortcuts:
https://steamdb.info/app/218/graphs/
that should be mostly gta fivem

[arc361]

Ah ic awesome now at least I know what could of caused it.