Guide: Identifying an Unknown Steam Key

[jbondguy007]

With "random keys" giveaways being a common occurrence on various keys giveaway websites, you may often receive a key for a game you already own, and sometimes, Steam will not notify you of which game exactly you tried activating that was "already owned".

In this short guide, we will explain how you can identify a Steam key when attempting to activate it to your account.

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Archi's Steam Farm

The first, easiest and recommended (by me) solution would be to install a Steam bot helper tool called "Archi's Steam Farm", which will assist you in various tasks on Steam, including (but not limited to) key and licenses activation, Steam trading cards "farming", and auto Steam event cards collecting (such as auto discovery queue during sales, which grants free event cards daily).

Pictured below is basic interaction with an alt account setup with ASF:
https://i.imgur.com/Ix3PL7I.png

As you can see, the key was not activated as the account already owned it - As a result, ASF returned the following details; that the key was already owned, the AppID of the game, along with the title of said game.

For more details on ASF, please read the ASF section in our FAQ.

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Browser Console Solution

The second solution is a fairly recently discovered (or popularized) way to identify a Steam key, and involves using your web browser's developer console.

Step by step guide below:

1. Go to https://store.steampowered.com/account/registerkey (make sure you're logged in with the account on which you want to activate the key!)
   
2. Open the browser developer console with F12
   
3. Submit your key in the product activation box on the Steam page (not the console)
   
4. In the console, locate the tab titled as "Network"
   
5. Click the "/account/ajaxregisterkey" entry
   
6. Locate the "Response" tab
   
7. Locate and expand the "line_items" section to reveal information about the Steam key

Below is an image guide for reference, credits of TTRM:
https://i.imgur.com/ay03KHl.jpeg

This guide can be follow by both Firefox and Chrome users, although Chrome users will see a slightly different user interface on Chrome than in the guide pictured above.

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SteamDB Extension

Another method for easily identifying random Steam keys is to use the SteamDB Extension:
https://steamdb.info/extension/

- Install the browser extension
- Visit https://store.steampowered.com/account/registerkey
- Input your code (only works with single keys)
- SteamDB Extension will identify the game and will give a link to the SteamDB package for it.

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Credits goes to FGF community members TTRM for the "Browser Console Solution" guide and image, and Kijame for originally sharing this information with other group members.

Credits to Ratha Wynter for the SteamDB extension solution.

[Ratha Wynter]

Ive been using the Browser Console method lately of identifying keys since my normal method ( steam://open/activateproduct ) stopped working, and bringing up the Product Activation entry box manually is quite a chore when you have lots of keys to test. Turns out that this method is not 100% accurate for identifying multi-key games however.

Specifically, I have a multikey that asks me to install 4 games when registered through Steam (Absconding Zatwor, Break Into Zatwor, Fiends of Imprisonment, They Came From The Moon) but when checked against the website it reports, "Absconding Zatwor + Break Into Zatwor + Fiends of Imprisonment" and does NOT include They Came From The Moon. Now this probably wont be an issue in most circumstances since the majority of multikeys I've run across are for games which have been removed from the Steam store. But may be important to note.

Edit: There are also spelling errors like "Blood Rayne Betrayal" instead of "BloodRayne Betrayal"

Packs that dont show all games through ASF / Console. (Missing game is in parenthesis.)
- "Brilliant Bob + Why So Evil + Why So Evil 2: Dystopia" (+ GooCubelets)
- "Why So Evil, Why So Evil 2: Dystopia + Brilliant Bob" (+ They Came From The Moon)
- "Absconding Zatwor, Break Into Zatwor, Fiends of Imprisonment" (+ They Came From The Moon)

[Ratha Wynter]

Another method for easily identifying random Steam keys is to use the SteamDB Extension:
https://steamdb.info/extension/

- Install the browser extension
- Visit https://store.steampowered.com/account/registerkey
- Input your code (only works with single keys)
- SteamDB Extension will identify the game and will give a link to the SteamDB package for it.