How to Crack a Windows Steam Game

Published in

· 22 Jun 2019

This tutorial is written by me but all the tools and other content in the toolkit are made by others, I've just bundled everything together.

Everyone who plans to use this tutorial or included toolkit MUST read at least 10.

Index

Introduction
Disclaimer
Toolkit
Things you need
Preparation
Using Protection ID (optional)
How to use a basic Steam emulator
How to use a SmartSteamEmulator (SSE)
Testing your release
Unlocking DLCs

1. Introduction

Welcome to the basic Steam game cracking tutorial! This tutorial will teach you how to make most of the Windows Steam games playable and shareable to others. You don't need any special skills to use this tutorial. This tutorial will only explain the basics, this won't work for every single game available in Steam. If a game uses Denuvo, "Custom Triggers" or some obscure/completely new DRM, you can't use this tutorial to make it work properly.

Please read through the whole tutorial at least once to ensure you get a good understanding of what needs to be done. The tutorial is quite long and detailed, but the process itself is very simple.

2. Disclaimer

USE THIS TUTORIAL AT YOUR OWN RISK! I cannot be held responsible if something happens to your computer, Steam account, or to anything else.

3. Toolkit

I've created a toolkit for everyone to use. It contains everything you will need to make most of the games work, and little more. The toolkit can be found from here.

All you need to do is extract the archive to have all the tools, patchers, emulators etc. ready to use. Make sure you create an exception in your AntiVirus program for the folder where you plan to extract the files! The majority of the files will get flagged as malware by your AntiVirus. All of those are false positives.

Contents:

Steam emulators + launchers
Steam Stub Patchers
SteamWrappers
CEG emulators
Uplay emulators
GFWL emulators
Kalypso emulators
ProtectionID

Toolkit updated: 10-06-2016

4. Things you need

Original game files from Steam
Protection ID (optional, but makes life much easier)
Steam emu
WinRAR, 7-Zip or equivalent

5. Preparation

Decide what game you want to make playable without Steam.
Make sure the game files are up-to-date. Open your Steam client, and let Steam update the game if any updates are available.
Go to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common" or wherever you installed your Steam client to. This is the place where Steam stores all the game files. Each game is stored in its own folder.
Make a copy of the game folder to your Desktop (can be any folder, just don't use the original folder where Steam stores the game files).
If you have never launched the game with your Steam account, you can skip this step. Check the game folder for log.txt, output_log.txt or any similar files, as well as folders called "save/saves" etc. These are are usually quite easy to spot. These are the only files which could link the release back to you in any way.
Check if the game has steam_api.dll or steam_api64.dll files. If it doesn't, the game is most likely DRM free. Test if it works without Steam running in the background, and test if the game saves work properly.

6. Using Protection ID (optional)

Protection ID is used to detect the protection/protections and it's version. The most common protection is Steam API Protection, on top of that there can be numerous different protections. Knowing the Steam API protection version is often helpful to figure out which emu to use.

Open Protection ID
Click "Scan" on the bottom left corner of the Protection ID window. Select Single File. Other options can be used too, but I personally prefer scanning one file at the time.
Navigate to the game folder. Select steam_api.dll/steam_api64.dll and click open. Protection ID scans the file. Do the same thing for the game .exe.
Once the scan is complete, search the log for any reports about detected protections. You will be looking for lines like this: "Steam Client API Module v 02.19.34.93 detected !" and "[!] Steam Stub (new #2) detected" The useful lines are usually displayed in white.
Steam Stub protection is used on the .exe file, if that's detected, you need to use Steam Stub Patcher.

7. How to use a basic Steam emulator

Steam emu/emulator works by emulating the Steam client and makes the game think that Steam client is running in the background through a logged in account containing the game in the Steam library. Basic emus are usually steam_api.dll + .ini file. There are several different kinds of good Steam emus available. I will be explaining how to use two of those in this tutorial. Most of the emus are similar to each other, so the same basics should work across the board. Some of the emulators also come with documentation from the maker of the emu.

Important Note: Not all emus work with all games, if you can't get some game working with the emu you first tried, try a different one.

General note about emus; "#" as the first symbol of a row in the .ini means that the line is just a comment, and therefore doesn't have a function. e.g. there might be a line like this: "#UnlockAllDLC=1". To unlock the DLC in this case, you'll need to remove the # symbol.

Decide what emulator you would like to use. In this part of the tutorial I will use ALI213 P2P emu.
Find the AppID of your game. It's the number part of Steam store page url. e.g. AppID of 0rbitalis is 278440. (http://store.steampowered.com/app/278440/) Another useful place to find AppIDs is SteamDB.
ALI213 emu has different versions for every different version of the steam api protection. If a game uses Steam API v02.19.34.9 protection, use the v02.19.34.9 ALI213 emu.
Copy emulators .ini and .dll to game folder. Remember to overwrite the .dll file.
Edit the .ini file, in this case ALI213.ini. With every emu you will need to change at least the AppID to the correct one.
Open .ini on any text editor. Browse through the .ini file or use the search function to find the line containing "appid". In ALI213 emu it's "AppID=000000". Now change the number to the correct one, e.g. to "AppID=278440". Save changes.
If the game supports several languages but you can't change the language in game options, you can sometimes use the "Language =" line to change the language of the game.
Now you are ready to test if your release works without Steam. Jump to 9. Testing your release, and other final preparations before uploading

8. How to use a SmartSteamEmulator (SSE)

SSE is the next emu which I will be covering in this tutorial. Detailed info about the emulator can be found from the "SmartSteamEmu.txt" inside the emulator folder. SSE allows you to easily run most games without Steam by following a few easy steps. SSE even allows online multiplayer with some games. A good example is Golf With Your Friends. If you decide to use SSE, use v1.4.x or newer. Older versions can cause heavy network usage.

IMPORTANT! SSE requires original steam_api.dll/steam_api64.dll! Using a cracked one wont work! This part of the tutorial explains only the basic steps to use SSE, everything else you can learn from the documentation which comes with the emu.

There are a few redundant files which come with SSE. SmartSteamEmu_IMPORTANT.txt and SmartSteamEmu.txt are never needed. The SmartSteamEmu folder with plugins and SSELauncher.exe are only needed in some cases. If a game is x86 only (steam_api.dll), or x64 (steam_api64.dll), you can remove the redundant SSE .dll (SmartSteamEmu.dll/SmartSteamEmu64.dll). SSE also works with the redundant files, I just prefer to keep my releases clean.

Copy the contents of the SSE folder (\SmartSteamEmu vX.X.X\SmartSteamEmu) to the folder which has the game exe.
Open SmartSteamEmu.ini on text editor.
Find the line containing "Target = game.exe". Change it to the correct one, e.g. to "Target = 0rbitalis.exe".
Find the line containing "AppId = 0". Change the number to the ID of your game, e.g. "AppId = 278440"
Save all changes.
If the game supports several languages, but you can't change the language in game options, you can sometimes use the "Language =" line to change the language of the game.
When using SSE, you must use SmartSteamLoader.exe to run the game. Make a note about this to release description when uploading.
Now you are ready to test if your release works without Steam.

9. Testing your release, and other final preparations before uploading

Make sure your Steam client is not running in the background. After exiting the game, check that your Steam client didn't launch in the background.
Try launching and playing the game. Go to actual gameplay, not just menus. Save game and exit the game. Launch the game again and check if the game saved progress properly. If you encounter issues, game crashes, the Steam client starting up or anything similar, try again with a different emulator.
Check what languages are available in the game.
Check the version number of your game. Most of the time it's displayed in main menu, or in options, info or credits menu. If it's not available there, you can check SteamDB for when the game was last updated in Steam and use the date as a build number.
Remove all save/profile/log files. 3DM and ALI213 emus create a "Profile" folder in the game folder with your settings and saves.
Archive the game folder with WinRAR or 7-zip. Do not use split archives! Make sure the archive name is descriptive, e.g. "Game Name v1.1.2.rar".

10. Unlocking DLCs

To unlock DLCs you will need to have all the required files. Most of the time those are not included unless you've bought and installed DLCs. There are a few exceptions, so you could try unlocking without having the extra files (if you only have the base game). You will also need to know the AppID of the DLCs, and in some cases the name of the DLC. You can find those from Steam store, or from SteamDB. I prefer SteamDB.

This is done differently with every emu but again, the basics are the same. Most of the time you can figure this out easily by just looking at .ini file of the emu. In this example I will use ALI213 emu.

Open .ini file on text editor. Find the "DLC" section. If the emu has "UnlockAll =" or something similar as an option, you can try with that setting. Change "UnlockAll = 0" to "1". Also make sure the line isn't commented out with "#" or ";"
If the "UnlockAll" option doesn't exist or doesn't work, you will have to try manually unlocking the DLCs. Look at "Example 1" below. That's what the ALI213 DLC section usually looks like by default. Lines are commented out, so those aren't loaded.
Remove ";" from start of every line you want to use. Add the correct AppID & DLC name. See "Example 2" below. Information is from here. Save changes.
Always test to see if the DLCs actually work! Change the emu if needed.