How to lower the ban risk

There is no way to be fully protected from bans: Valve keeps changing the rules. But most farmers get banned for the same few mistakes. Below are the rules, sorted from the most important to the least important. Following even the first few noticeably lowers the risk.

1. The first purchase is not Prime

The first purchase on an account should not be CS Prime. An account that was created and immediately got Prime looks like a typical farm blank.

Buy some cheap game first, and only then Prime. Games with Steam trading cards are the best choice, see rule 8.

2. Don't withdraw the drop right away

Don't take the drop off the account in the same week it dropped. Withdraw once every 3–4 weeks: this gives Valve fewer signals that the account exists only for the drop.

Maximum safety

Withdraw with TF2 keys: sell the drop on the Steam Community Market right on the farm account, buy keys with the balance, and send only the keys to the storage account. Details in Collecting and withdrawing the drop.

3. Reliable email providers only

Don't register Steam accounts on unreliable email services. Use only:

• Gmail
• Outlook / Hotmail
• iCloud

Cheap emails = bans

Steam bans accounts registered on shady domains: for example, there were bans of accounts on firstmail.ltd emails. Saving on emails costs more than the emails themselves.

4. Don't use aggressive WalkBot settings

The more aggressive and unnatural the bot behaves in a match, the more it looks like a bot. Keep the calm default settings and don't push them for extra XP: a few percent of farming speed are not worth the account.

5. Don't link accounts to each other

Valve finds farms by the links between accounts. If one account gets banned, the linked ones may follow.

• don't send the whole farm's drop to a single storage account every week;
• don't trade items between farm accounts;
• don't run all accounts in third-party tools like ASF: they tie the accounts together in one place.

6. Scale gradually

Don't buy and launch a hundred accounts in one day. Start with 5–10, go through the full cycle from farming to withdrawal, and add accounts in batches. Do bulk actions (logins, trades, purchases, sales) through proxies, so hundreds of accounts don't hit Steam from one IP. CRUX MANAGER can do this.

7. Optional: turn on the partial farm

Partial farm is a panel feature: accounts that already got their weekly drop keep playing matches just for fun, beyond the requirement. Turn on "Auto partial farm after full farm": once all accounts are farmed, the panel runs one more partial farm pass, and after the weekly reset it goes back to the normal farm.

Why it helps:

• it looks more natural. A real player doesn't quit the game the very minute they get the drop. An account that plays strictly until the reward and then disappears until next Wednesday looks like a bot;
• the next week is farmed faster. XP earned during the partial farm helps close the next week sooner.

8. Optional: farm hours and cards in other games

An account that has only CS2 looks suspicious. A real player plays other games too.

• Build up hours in other games automatically with the panel's features.
• From time to time, buy cheap games with Steam trading cards on your accounts. The panel will farm the cards by itself, and you can sell them on the market. This often fully pays for the game, and sometimes even brings a small profit.

This way the account both warms up and pays for itself.

Security in Crux Panel

The built-in spoofer gives every account unique PC characteristics: HWID, MAC address, disk serial numbers, GPU model. From the outside, the accounts look like players on different computers.