In light of the upcoming Steam Marketplace changes next week, I’ve decided to discontinue working on and supporting Steam Idle Master. As someone who is unable to use the mobile authenticator, having trading cards put on hold for 15 days prior to being listed in the market makes the proposition of selling them a difficult one. As most of you know, the value of each card can fluctuate wildly in that amount of time.

This, bundled with additional security measures Valve has put in place are a good step forward in that they make Steam more safe for its users. For me personally, the cost of this safety is inconvenience. For people in my position who are unable to use the mobile authenticator, this effectively makes idling for and selling Steam Trading Cards a futile effort.

Idle Master started out as and always has been a hobby project. My personal attitude towards it has always been “It’s something I built for myself that I find useful, others probably will too”. The first part of that statement, however, is no longer true.

Going forward: I will be updating the Idle Master homepage so that the “Download” button links directly to the portable version of Idle Master. The homepage will remain online for the foreseeable future, but I’ll be adding a statement to the site that the program has been discontinued and is no longer being supported.

The source code for Idle Master is and will remain available on Github under an open source license.

Finally, I would like to say “Thank you” to all of Idle Master’s users and fans. Without you, a project like this couldn’t have been as successful as it was. For those of you who this security change won’t affect: happy idling in the future!