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Damian Rajamanie avatar image
Damian Rajamanie asked

Steam Friends Not Listed On 'Some' Accounts

Hi I have a very wierd bug/error for 3 Steam linked accounts that I'm hoping you can help delve into.

We have 8 Steam test accounts to test our friend system. 3 accounts are not picking up the steam friend list for some reason. Our accounts are names SQA TTG 1-8 (1, 2 and 3 seem borked)

I attach a screenshot showing 2 accounts, SQA TTG 5 is friends with SQA TTG 1 in steam. In playfab 5 shows 1 as a friend with blank tags, and 1 cannot be deleted (he's been added successfully via your steam friend link). 1 however does not show 5. 1 is also friends with 2 and 3, and all 3 only show freinds that get linked via our game (Playfab API Add Friend calls.).

TitleID: EAA9 (This is currently a live backend with real players, not a test one :) )

Accounts: F94BDB831DF0E509, AADB1AC9CBFEDAEA, 56C9451DE56D8580 (SQA TTG 1, 2 and 3)

in Steam F94BDB831DF0E509 is freinds with both 9B4810E44F6FD744 and 843EE78BFD1BE206 (4 and 5), but as you can see from the screenshot, niether appear in his list (only 3 accounts that were added using the API).

I don't know what is different about these 3 accounts and I'm hoping that with those IDs you might be able to delve into the Steam IDs or information you're getting and determine why playfab is not able to display or return them.

cheers

steamfriends.png (98.5 KiB)
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Damian Rajamanie avatar image Damian Rajamanie commented ·

Here's some extra information which may or may not have affected these accounts. All the accounts settings in Steam, look fine by the way.

The 3 accounts concerned were logged into EAA9 only, where as some of the other accounts may have logged into BA50 first.

Those 3 accounts initially couldn't add friends because they did not have a 'paid' steam account, steam would not allow them to add, and a paid account, like 5, added 1.

By 'paid' account I mean that they were test steam accounts, since we realised they could not add friends, we gave each account a proper key which turns them into legit accounts (Steam/Valve security I think).

SQA TTG 1 certainly had some testing done to block communication via Steam, perhaps this borked i. However I tested this with 5, by blocking 1 and he did not appear in my steam list on playfab, until I unblocked him and he came back - which would all seem good.

Adding this info in case that might help - fact that they couldn't add friends, had once blocked, were on a different title etc.

All of that is supposed to work fine and has worked fine with other accounts as far as we can tell though.

Thanks for the help

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Damian Rajamanie avatar image Damian Rajamanie commented ·

One more bit of info from our testers was that 5 and 1 added each other as friends via the Steam Overlay in game. If that makes a difference in the Steam calls you guys make or not

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brendan avatar image
brendan answered

The way the "IncludeSteamFriends" (as well as the Facebook option) works is that we make a request to Steam (or Facebook) to get the current list of friends from them. The only thing you'll see in the Game Manager would be friends you added to the user's friends list using the AddFriend API call.

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Damian Rajamanie avatar image
Damian Rajamanie answered

hmmm, no offense when I say that does not appear to be true:

This account has never made any friends using the playfab AddFriend API. the list of 5 friends you see there are friends on Steam, they have been automatically added to the list. All 5 have authenticated our game, via Steam/Playfab (linked steam to playfab).

As you can see the tags are null, I have not done anything to include these friends, playfab has brought them into the GameManager view all on it's own.

I cannot delete these friends, if I try to remove one of them I get:

If I add a friend using the API (my system will add tags to identify invite status), I can remove them from GameManager OR via the RemoveFriend API call.

So, for the original post, I'm not getting these friends seen. No to address your answer, if what you say is true, then that answers the original post... but then how are these friends explained? My assumption is that this is correct, because this is what I'm seeing on all our user accounts, auto magic Steam friends who also have logged into the game and have a playfab account, added. Only the 3 I mentioned work as you describe, so now I'm extra confused


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Damian Rajamanie avatar image Damian Rajamanie commented ·

Also, regardless weather the GameManager shows them or not, I do "IncludeSteamFriends" in my Get FriendsList() and those 3 account have steam friends with playfab accounts which do not get returned.

Can you help finding out why they are not returned using that API call? I can provide more information and even give you the Steam accounts if need be

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brendan avatar image brendan Damian Rajamanie commented ·

I'll do some testing to see if the Game Manager logic has been updated to use the same IncludeSteamFriends (and IncludeFacebookFriends) logic - if so, then my apologies for the confusion on that part.

However, the fact does remain that we do not store lists of friends for Steam or Facebook in PlayFab - we do an active query to those services, in order to ensure compliance with their policies. So any friends returned for those cases would be completely under the control of those services. For example, Facebook will only return those friends who have also played the same game, and whose profile privacy settings allow them to be queried. It's possible Steam may do something similar.

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Damian Rajamanie avatar image Damian Rajamanie commented ·

I'm unconcerned about weather or not they are viewable in the GameManager view tbh, it's more the fact that I'm not getting them.

I'm telling my QA, there's nothing I can do, that's what playfab gives me, you're saying, there's nothing we can do that's what Steam gives us. So fair enough, we'll need to figure out why Steam is not giving PlayFab that list, but at least that confirms something for me and there's somethign dodgy with those accounts. I'm worried that 'some' of my live users will encounter this, hopefully not - or it's something in thier steam profile

cheers

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Damian Rajamanie avatar image Damian Rajamanie Damian Rajamanie commented ·

OK excellent, thanks for your help, I got our QA to delve into the profiles of the accounts concerned and indeed their privacy settings had been set to 'Friends Only'. I assume that as a 3rd party API call, PlayFab is not considered a 'friend' and thus gets nothing back from Steam.

They set them back to Public and BAM, they popped up in playfab GameManager (P.S. I do quite like that they are visible in the GameManager).

grrr to my QA for this as they said all the accounts were the same, thanks for your help in tracking it down and glad that the system is working correctly. Nothing to see here folks!

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brendan avatar image brendan Damian Rajamanie commented ·

Calls from our service to Steam are always on behalf of the users, so I would hope that even if they're set to "friends only", we'd still get the information about a player's friends. But yes, I can't really say for sure how Steam has implemented their service, or whether they'll change anything out from under us.

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Clay Fowler avatar image
Clay Fowler answered

@Raj when you say "their privacy settings had been set to 'Friends Only" where exactly is this setting? We are having exactly the same problem that you described. Thanks!

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