steam keeps saying im playing different games when i'm not and the games it says i'm playing are totally random

[76561198192726397]

if youre reading this post not long after me making it you can see it says i'm playing unreal gold and i have a decent number of hours in it. i also have a decent number of hours in tom clancy's ghost recon island thunder. i have barely ever played either of these games in actuality

totally randomly (as in you can start steam and everything is normal and then between 10 minutes and 14 hours later) it says i'm playing some random game when i don't even have the game installed and the process isn't running.

as you know when a game is running in steam you CANNOT start another game, you also CANNOT verify game cache or do a lot of other things. this means i'm essentially in prison and can't do anything such as play the games i paid money for.

the only way to remedy this for a SHORT PERIOD is to exit steam completely, delete the entire appcache folder in the steam folder, delete clientregistry.blob in the steam folder and restart it. that will fix it for about an hour then it'll do it again. so essentially every time i want to play a game or do literally anything i have to restart steam.

meanwhile im racking up hours in games im not even playing. if it does this to a game i just bought that i dont even like and want a refund for it sends me over the two hour limit pretty fast and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ valve will refuse my refund.

this has just been going on too long and there's no help from anyone. everyone just parrots the same stupid ♥♥♥♥ over and over that anyone with two brain cells would do right away. "duhhhh have you tried restarting your computer?" yeah, no ♥♥♥♥, i never thought of that.

it's getting ridiculous now and the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up support "people" (literally do not know if steam support is made of real people or just robots) have no answers other than to do what i have to do every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ day if i want to play one game i paid 60 dollars for for a few minutes.

if this happened to me i know that it statistically must have happened to someone else. i know that in the underground there's some trick, some answer. i need to know what it is.

i need to know.

[76561198192726397]

J4MESOX4D eredeti hozzászólása:

Not sure if this is a refund attempt thread or if the OP is hijacked or what.

If it is not you that's playing these games then someone has access to your account. Games don't play themselves. At least de-authorize all other devices for starters.

the process isnt running yet steam still recognizes it as being run. my account is not hijacked or shared with anyone else.

[Hasel]

J4MESOX4D eredeti hozzászólása:

Not sure if this is a refund attempt thread or if the OP is hijacked or what.

If it is not you that's playing these games then someone has access to your account. Games don't play themselves. At least de-authorize all other devices for starters.

This is a common bug by Steam, where the app thinks you are still playing the game.
I had this issue today as well, that Steam told me i am playing Mafia, but i don't.
The only fix from the past i known is to delete the appcache folder, so then it is fixed, but Steam should ensure that this should never happen, also if you now try to tell me as well my Account would be hijacked that is not possible. Also this bug happened alot around 2015 and 2016, till they fixed it. So we just need to report it again so that Steam will fix it eventually again

[J4MESOX4D]

Jake Sparrow eredeti hozzászólása:

J4MESOX4D eredeti hozzászólása:

Not sure if this is a refund attempt thread or if the OP is hijacked or what.

If it is not you that's playing these games then someone has access to your account. Games don't play themselves. At least de-authorize all other devices for starters.

This is a common bug by Steam, where the app thinks you are still playing the game.
I had this issue today as well, that Steam told me i am playing Mafia, but i don't.
The only fix from the past i known is to delete the appcache folder, so then it is fixed, but Steam should ensure that this should never happen, also if you now try to tell me as well my Account would be hijacked that is not possible. Also this bug happened alot around 2015 and 2016, till they fixed it. So we just need to report it again so that Steam will fix it eventually again

That's nothing to do with the OP's problem. Read the thread again. The user is talking about games playing themselves randomly even when the software isn't installed on his system.

[76561198192726397]

J4MESOX4D eredeti hozzászólása:

Jake Sparrow eredeti hozzászólása:

This is a common bug by Steam, where the app thinks you are still playing the game.
I had this issue today as well, that Steam told me i am playing Mafia, but i don't.
The only fix from the past i known is to delete the appcache folder, so then it is fixed, but Steam should ensure that this should never happen, also if you now try to tell me as well my Account would be hijacked that is not possible. Also this bug happened alot around 2015 and 2016, till they fixed it. So we just need to report it again so that Steam will fix it eventually again

That's nothing to do with the OP's problem. Read the thread again. The user is talking about games playing themselves randomly even when the software isn't installed on his system.

its similar but not exactly the same deleting the appcache stops it but only for a short time so it has to be done repeatedly.

[Hennix]

look his namehistory
seems a troll

[Hasel]

J4MESOX4D eredeti hozzászólása:

Jake Sparrow eredeti hozzászólása:

This is a common bug by Steam, where the app thinks you are still playing the game.
I had this issue today as well, that Steam told me i am playing Mafia, but i don't.
The only fix from the past i known is to delete the appcache folder, so then it is fixed, but Steam should ensure that this should never happen, also if you now try to tell me as well my Account would be hijacked that is not possible. Also this bug happened alot around 2015 and 2016, till they fixed it. So we just need to report it again so that Steam will fix it eventually again

That's nothing to do with the OP's problem. Read the thread again. The user is talking about games playing themselves randomly even when the software isn't installed on his system.

Yes and this is the same issue i was talking i have Mafia not installed, but it is occuring since yesterday again, since i got these issues last time 2015. This was a common bug and Steam fixed it, This bug is annoying, because it prevents me to play an other game also you cannot delete the files, if you are not rebooting the system before, because it is already used by steam. Right now i unplugged my external HDD and then i could delete this game, hopefully not other games are affected as well. This bug happens to old games.

[76561198192726397]

Jake Sparrow eredeti hozzászólása:

J4MESOX4D eredeti hozzászólása:

That's nothing to do with the OP's problem. Read the thread again. The user is talking about games playing themselves randomly even when the software isn't installed on his system.

Yes and this is the same issue i was talking i have Mafia not installed, but it is occuring since yesterday again, since i got these issues last time 2015. This was a common bug and Steam fixed it, This bug is annoying, because it prevents me to play an other game also you cannot delete the files, if you are not rebooting the system before, because it is already used by steam. Right now i unplugged my external HDD and then i could delete this game, hopefully not other games are affected as well. This bug happens to old games.

now that i think about it it only shows me as playing really old games. like games that came out before 2005.

[Hasel]

yea i know it is annoying i contacted Steam Support hopefully they can fix this again, also this issue occured again after their last update -.-

[iRumiN8]

For anyone in 2022 and beyond...
I discovered a workaround fix for this issue. It turns out, my problem had to do with older games doing something (that's actually probably a security bug IMO) wrong when searching path, or with Steam's/the game's ability to set the current SteamAppId. Especially with games that re-launch using a launcher.

What i had to do was remove any other steam-game installations (ones that weren't installed with steam, in my case, a Valheim server i installed using the steamcmdtool) away from the C drive.

Then, I went to my system environment variables, and changed 'SteamAppId' to the appropriate ID value for the game I was playing (notice how it's the id for the other game??) . Once the launcher kicked off, it continued to show the correct game. Hope that can help someone else with this issue.