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Strapoutin Jan 29, 2018 @ 7:34am

Is creating a BOT to retrieve market data illegal ?

Hello,

I am planning on making a program to get data from steam like for exemple an inventory (for exemple mine) and to check on the market the price of these items.

I would like to know if it is legal and if not, where it isn't.

Thanks

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Showing 1-9 of 9 comments

Spawn of Totoro Jan 29, 2018 @ 7:37am

A better way would be to use the Steam API.

https://steamcommunity.com/dev

Pierrot Jan 29, 2018 @ 7:37am

Many extensions are already doing it. I guess it's not illegal if you don't make money out of it.

eram Jan 29, 2018 @ 7:38am

Botting the steam market cna get your account banned yeah. If you read the steam tos it says.

You may not use Cheats, automation software (bots), mods, hacks, or any other unauthorized third-party software, to modify or automate any Subscription Marketplace process.

http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

Last edited by eram; Jan 29, 2018 @ 7:38am

Strapoutin Jan 29, 2018 @ 7:40am

Originally posted by eram:
Botting the steam market cna get your account banned yeah. If you read the steam tos it says.

You may not use Cheats, automation software (bots), mods, hacks, or any other unauthorized third-party software, to modify or automate any Subscription Marketplace process.

Yup this is what I read. Therefore, using the stam API to do such thing would lead me to the same result, right ?

For more precision, the program itself would just retrieve data, not perform any other actions such as automating the process of listing items.

eram Jan 29, 2018 @ 7:43am

Scraping data using the api should be fine, you are not really automating the sale, but just be warned if you go too far with the automation something could happen.

Forcen Jan 29, 2018 @ 7:45am

Bot might be the wrong name for what you are doing. Bots at least to me are programs that acts as a user kinda, like a chat bot or a trade bot. A market bot makes it sound like it would use a normal steam account, this is not cool with Steam.

If you make an app or a program that just checks stuff with the API but doesn't actually do anything to steam beyond that API it should be fine. (I could be wrong about all this)