ForceBuy FAQ
Short answers about what ForceBuy reads, what it stores and what it asks of you.
What is ForceBuy?
ForceBuy keeps a ledger of your CS2 items: what you own, what each item cost, what it is worth today and what you made on the items you sold. It reads your Steam inventory and your purchase and sale histories on the Steam Community Market, CSFloat and Buff163, and ties each price to the item it belongs to.
ForceBuy is an independent project and is not affiliated with Valve or Steam.
Where do the purchase prices come from?
From the histories of the places where you bought. With your Steam session, ForceBuy reads your Steam market history, which lists every market purchase and sale with its price. With a CSFloat API key it reads your CSFloat trades, and with your Buff163 session your Buff163 purchases and sales.
Each purchase is tied to the exact copy in your inventory. Where that is not certain, the match is marked "Ambiguous". Items with no purchase on record, such as trades and drops, get a cost by hand, from a CSV import or from a cost rule such as "drops cost nothing".
See also: How to find what you paid for your CS2 skins; How ForceBuy works.
Do I have to give ForceBuy my Steam cookie?
No. Without it ForceBuy reads the public view of your inventory, which needs your inventory to be public, and values it with current prices. Purchase prices then come from CSFloat, Buff163 or your own entries.
With the cookie ForceBuy can also read a private inventory, the contents of your storage units, your inventory history and your Steam market history. You can paste it by hand or let the ForceBuy browser extension hand it over for you (Chrome, Edge and Firefox).
What is the Steam cookie, and how long does it last?
It is the cookie named steamLoginSecure that your browser keeps while you are signed in to steamcommunity.com. It is your whole signed-in session, not a read-only permission, because Steam offers no such permission. You copy it from your browser's developer tools; ForceBuy shows the steps for Chrome, Edge and Firefox.
A pasted session lasts about 24 hours, then Steam ends it. Steam can also end it earlier, for example when you sign out. You can paste a new one by hand, or let ForceBuy renew it by itself (see the next question). Nothing is lost when a session ends: ForceBuy falls back to your public inventory, and the next session catches up on the history in between.
Can ForceBuy keep my Steam session going?
Yes, if you want it to. Instead of pasting a new session every day, you can store Steam's renewal token once. It is the cookie named steamRefresh_steam that Steam sets on login.steampowered.com when you sign in with "Remember me". It lasts up to about seven months. ForceBuy uses it about once a day to fetch a fresh session from Steam, with two GET requests to login.steampowered.com. Nothing else is done with it.
The token allows more than the session: it can mint new sessions for as long as it lives. It is stored encrypted, never shown again, and every use is listed under Settings > Stored access. You end it by deleting it in ForceBuy or by signing out of Steam in the browser it came from. Pasting a session by hand keeps working, and you can use either way.
The browser extension is the second way to store the token. It sends the token when you connect it and again after every new Steam sign-in in that browser, without asking each time. Signing out of Steam ends only the current token, not the extension; disconnecting the extension ends it.
What does the browser extension do?
ForceBuy Connect is a browser extension from the Chrome Web Store (for Chrome and Edge) and from Firefox Add-ons. It hands your Steam access to ForceBuy so you do not copy it from the developer tools. In your browser it reads exactly two Steam cookies: the renewal token steamRefresh_steam on login.steampowered.com and, only as a fallback when no token can be delivered, the session steamLoginSecure on steamcommunity.com. If you switch Buff163 on for it and allow buff.163.com in the browser, it also reads the Buff163 cookie named session.
It sends them only to forcebuy.net, without asking each time: when you connect it, when you press the button, and after every new sign-in in that browser. It sets and deletes no cookie, calls no other service, not even Steam, and cannot trade, list or sell. A stolen connection key can only deliver an access for your own inventories, it cannot read anything. Its source code is public at github.com/ed3ntim/forcebuy-connect.
Signing out of Steam ends only the current token, not the extension. To stop it, disconnect under Settings > Marketplaces > Browser extension or in the extension's popup; by default this also deletes what it delivered. Storing access this way is the same risk as pasting it (see "Is it allowed to store the Steam cookie in ForceBuy?").
Is it allowed to store the Steam cookie in ForceBuy?
Storing the cookie or the renewal token in a third-party tool goes against Steam's terms of use, and Valve can restrict or ban an account for it. The token is the larger exposure, because it works for months instead of a day. The same applies to the Buff163 session and Buff163's user agreement. ForceBuy only reads with them, but that does not change the rule, and ForceBuy asks you to confirm that you take this risk before it stores either.
If you do not want that risk, use the public inventory and add costs from CSFloat or by hand.
Can ForceBuy trade, sell or list my items?
No. Every request ForceBuy sends to Steam, CSFloat, Buff163 or any other marketplace is a GET request that only reads. ForceBuy never lists, buys, sells, trades or accepts an offer, not even behind a confirmation.
A Steam or Buff163 session would allow those actions to anyone who holds it. That is why stored sessions and keys are encrypted, never shown again, and every use is listed under Settings > Stored access.
Which marketplaces does ForceBuy use for prices?
Prices for the whole CS2 catalogue come from the Steam Community Market, CSFloat, Buff163, YouPin898, Skinport and C5Game and are updated several times a day. You choose which marketplace's price counts as the value of your items. Purchase and sale histories are read from the Steam Community Market, CSFloat and Buff163.
How does ForceBuy calculate value, fees and profit?
An item's value is the price a buyer pays on the marketplace you chose, with what you would keep after that marketplace's fee shown below it. Realised profit is what a sale left you after the fee, minus what the item cost.
Marketplaces report sales differently: Steam shows what you received, CSFloat and Buff163 show what the buyer paid. ForceBuy takes the fee off where it is still included, so both count the same way. A sale whose cost is not known is not counted as profit. Stickers, charms and name tags you put onto an item count in its cost with what you paid for them, shown apart from the item's own price; each kind can be left out in the settings. Amounts are converted into your currency with the reference rates of the European Central Bank.
See also: Steam Market fees explained.
What does ForceBuy store, and how do I delete it?
Your SteamID64, public display name and avatar address; your ledger with items, prices, dates, notes, collections and settings; and any access you choose to store. Stored sessions and keys are encrypted and expire after 30 days without a sign-in. The server is in Germany. There is no advertising and no analytics.
You can export your holdings as CSV and delete your account with everything in it under Settings. Deletion is immediate and cannot be undone.
See also: Privacy statement.
Can other people see my inventory on ForceBuy?
No. ForceBuy has no public profile, inventory or item pages. Your ledger is shown only to you, after you sign in with your Steam account.
Who can use ForceBuy right now?
ForceBuy on the web is in a closed test. Sign in with Steam to find out whether your account is part of it. If it is not, the page shows your SteamID64 and an address to ask for access.
Without signing in, the demo shows the whole app with invented items and prices. It needs no Steam account and is deleted after two hours.
Can I run ForceBuy on my own computer?
Yes. The local app for Windows does the same as the web version, with your data, keys and Steam session in one folder on your PC. It is on the ForceBuy releases page on GitHub.