Hey, in the README it's stated that you could download the depots of 
an app even if you don't own the app.m However, whenever I try this, 
I get stucked at "Getting a manifest for app x depot y gid z". It 
works just fine on apps I own though. What am I doing wrong?

> What am I doing wrong?

You're doing nothing wrong, in 2022 Valve made manifest request codes
mandatory for downloading manifests. This means you either have to own
the app, or have someone send it to you. However, once you have the
manifest, it's possible to archive the depots like you would expect. You
can find more info on it here:
https://steamdb.info/blog/manifest-request-codes/

On 21 Aug 2023, at 9:10, steamarchiver@elbert.anonaddy.com wrote:

> Hey, in the README it's stated that you could download the depots of
> an app even if you don't own the app.m However, whenever I try this,
> I get stucked at "Getting a manifest for app x depot y gid z". It
> works just fine on apps I own though. What am I doing wrong?
Sorry for the extremely late response, I've been having trouble with my email lately.

You weren't doing anything wrong, and what the other user said is correct; while you can still technically download _chunks_ (pieces of game content) from SteamPipe servers without ownership, you have no way of knowing which chunks you need to download without a _content manifest_, which used to be accessible without authentication but now does require authentication. I forgot to update the README when Valve made that change, so thanks for reminding me to do that! (I'll also look into why the program just freezes on "Getting a manifest"; it's supposed to throw an error when the manifest download fails due to lack of authentication.)

If you want to download a non-anonymous (i.e. not a dedicated server, etc.) app using steamarchiver, even if the app is free, you'll need to log in with an account like so:

    python3 depot_archiver.py -a [appid] -u [username]

You can also specify the password on the command line with -p; if you don't do that, you will be prompted for the password when the program runs.

This can (because no authentication is needed for chunk downloading) be bypassed if you place a copy of the needed manifest and place it in
depots/[appid]/[manifestid].zip, but I won't provide any help with that because I don't intend steamarchiver to be used for piracy. If you legitimately own a game on Steam, you can just log into the account to get the manifest.

(By the way, your "anonymous email forwarder" still exposed your real address because your mail client attached a copy of your PGP public key to the email. I hope you're aware of that!)

-benjamin