How to Get Your Steam Status to "Online" while In-Game (Short)

hi. This guide is mainly heading towards the rather famous TF2 youtubers, however can also apply to you. This guide informs you on how to be online, while you're in-game, which helps if someone is following you to every server you go on, or when you don't want people bothering you while you are in a server.

This is rather simple to do. All you need to do is simply shift-tab while in game, go to your friends list which also says "View Friends", and once you've clicked it, click the arrow on the right of your name, and go offline. Once you've gone offline, simply go to any browser, I recommend either Google Chrome or your Steam Browser. After that, type in

 https://steamcommunity.com/chat 

or click on this link.

And once you've done that, it'll show that you're online and you can still talk to your friends while they won't know how to join your game. Keep in mind that there are some flaws to this. A few of these flaws is that you won't be able to see notifications while in-game, you cannot voice chat with other friends, join their games threw your friends list, and you cannot search up your friends names. However, you can search your friends on the list by typing " ctrl+f " if you are on a Windows computer, but if you are on a Mac, then simply just type " command+f ", and then search your friend on that bar on the top right corner. That's how you simply become online while being in-game A.K.A being "false online". Thanks for reading!

Easier Guide

If that was a little too confusing for how to become "false online" then simply read this instead.

1. Click on your friends list through your steam overlay (shift+tab)
2. Click arrow right of your name on friends list
3. Change your status to "offline"
4. Go to " https://steamcommunity.com/chat "
5. Enjoy friends or random people not following you through every server you go to!

This also applys to mostly any game that involves joining a server (e.g. Counter Strike: Global Offensive)