[B]!NOTE! (2016/06/19)
​This procedure no longer works for in-game avatars, as Valve's changed how the avatar data is sent. A solution is WIP, ETA Q2 2054[/B]
[B]!NOTE! (2016/07/14)
The problem has been solved by the user Bauxite. Follow the instructions below and then go to post #27 for additional instructions (I will also be adding them to this post)[/B]
The Steam community is full of people using avatars which I among many find unpleasant to various degrees. Regular porn, furry porn, porn depicting porn, xenomorph porn, hentai, you get the point.
All of these things are, of course, against the Steam ToS. Unfortunately, Valve's moderation is far from satisfactory, which in turn have transformed the community into a sort of breeding ground for various.. [I]Things.[/I]
Now, for many people, this wouldn't necessarily be a problem, seeing as they use Steam exclusively as a tool to play games, while not caring much about the community. The problem does, however, affect more or less everyone as Valve, and some other developers, have decided to integrate Steam avatars into their titles, with no option to disable it. The question is whether or not you're bothered by it.
So why doesn't Valve just add the option to disable avatars? It's a fairly good question. I can only assume it's because the demand for it is not big enough, which in turn leads to their work costing more than it actually affects, as most people would probably choose to keep avatars enabled. But if the trend goes on, with the community leaning more and more from being gaming related, to turning into a porn site, I'm unsure for how long that would remain true.
There's a roughly two year old thread regarding the subject of adding an option to disable avatars on the Steam forums, and just for fun, here's a post from a Valve-employee being sarcastic:
[thumb]http://i.imgur.com/ui3Oqb5.png[/thumb]
Possibly does explain why their moderation is so terrible; they simply don't care.
So if you want to block the avatars, you need something that obliterates either the outgoing requests, or the returning data as soon as it's detected.
I've set up a hardware solution which does this, along with some other things for me. But I've been looking for a free, very easily configured tool that does the same thing, while also being efficient; something literally anyone could use without having to spend any cash or time. I'm under the impression that I've found the perfect candidate: Fiddler.
[thumb]http://priyankpatelnotes.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/fiddler-proxy-intro.jpg[/thumb]
So just what the hell is Fiddler? Well, according to wikipedia:
[quote][B]Fiddler[/B] is an [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP"]HTTP[/URL] debugging [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server"]proxy server[/URL] application written by Eric Lawrence, formerly a Program Manager on the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer"]Internet Explorer[/URL] development team at [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft"]Microsoft[/URL].
Fiddler captures HTTP and HTTPS traffic and logs it for the user to review (the latter by implementing [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-in-the-middle_attack"]man-in-the-middle[/URL] interception using [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-signed_certificate"]self-signed certificates[/URL]).[SUP][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddler_(software)#cite_note-HTTP_Debugging-5"][5][/URL][/SUP]
[B]Fiddler can also be used to modify ("[URL="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fiddle#Verb"]fiddle[/URL] with") HTTP traffic for troubleshooting purposes as it is being sent or received.[/B][SUP][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddler_(software)#cite_note-Introducing_Fiddler-4"][4][/URL][/SUP] By default, traffic from Microsoft's WinINET HTTP(S) stack is automatically directed to the proxy at runtime, but any browser or web application (and most mobile devices) can be configured to route its traffic through Fiddler.
[/quote]
It's a proxy server designed to give network and software engineers a quick overview over how things will react during certain circumstances, but as with most tools, it can be used for other purposes, making sure avatars from the steam community won't show is one of them.
Here's how you apply it:
1. Download Fiddler from: [URL]http://www.telerik.com/download/fiddler[/URL], then install it.
2. As you open Fiddler for the first time, you will probably see something such as this:
[thumb]http://i.imgur.com/4FAPQZt.png[/thumb]
Click on the "AutoResponder" tab to the right.
3. Now you will see this:
[thumb]http://i.imgur.com/9Xfoxgf.png[/thumb]
Cross the "Enable automatic responses" and "Unmatched requests passthrough" boxes.
Then click on "Add rules", and copy paste this into the top box: [URL]http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/avatars/[/URL]
Set the box beneath it to "*drop".
Then click "Save".
From what I've gathered by using Wireshark, that URL leads to the resource where all of the avatars are kept. By doing what you just did, packages labeled to or from it will now be destroyed.
However, if you now enter a game such as Team Fortress 2, you'll now notice that avatars are still present. Thus you'll need to add an additional rule.
It's the exact same procedure, just add this URL instead: [URL]http://media.steampowered.com/steamcommunity/public/images/avatars/[/URL].
I can only assume this is due to some wibbly-wobbly redirectioning that is out of our control.
Congratulations, all avatars on Steam (including the Steam forum) will now be blocked, apart from some, but I will come to that later.
[thumb]http://i.imgur.com/leWXls0.png[/thumb]
[thumb]http://i.imgur.com/fiSGLbL.jpg[/thumb]
4. Change "Keep: All sessions" to "Keep: 100 sessions", as the session-list will otherwise eventually become extremely long, consuming lots of unnecessary RAM in the process, after all, you don't want to archive network usage or anything like that, you just want to prevent Steam avatars from showing.
[thumb]http://i.imgur.com/AZ5dKBL.png[/thumb]
Notes and questions:
You will still be able to see some avatars, such as your own, the ones of your friends, and the ones of profiles you've previously visited, this is because those have been permanently stored on your HDD/SSD. If you want those gone as well, you'll have to clear the avatar cache.
Yes, it does work for non-Valve titles. Here's a screenshot of the lobby in Wreckfest AKA "Next Car Game":
[thumb]http://i.imgur.com/m2msgHM.jpg[/thumb]
If you turn off Fiddler, your web browsers [U]will stop working[/U], to fix this, you'll have to remove your proxy settings:
1. [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/uv4AW1Y.png[/thumb]
2. [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/NPMBuGa.png[/thumb]
3. [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/JoFxYMq.png[/thumb]
4. [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/zeMNo4N.png[/thumb]
Yes, it's in Swedish, but seeing as the layout's identical, and most of the options are named pretty much the same, you'll be able to figure it out.
[I]Will it consume a lot of my system's resources? [/I]I've tried it on both my main i5 4690 + 8GB primary memory system, and an Athlon II X2 + 4GB PM system, there's no practical performance hit.
While this tutorial itself is nicely put together, it's just a bunch of 16x16 squares, which answers the "whether or not you're bothered by it." part of your post pretty blatantly. :p However that brings me to my main point, and I've never been in the proper situation to ask this, so as the old saying goes: "When opportunity knocks..."
Why exactly do you find particular avatars bothersome to such a degree, that even though they are relatively small as far as pictures go, you would completely blot them out? What about "X IMAGE" makes you not want to see it? This isn't meant to be in bad tone, to each their own, but I'm genuinely curious as to your answer.
Aside from obvious things like a body with no head, or the other way around, that I can understand as to why one wouldn't want to see it. :p
Valve has less than 400 staff. Most of which do not moderate steam. How can you expect valve to moderate something you seem to be blaming on them when they have more than 100 million accounts. Lets assume that 1% of steam has an unacceptable avatar thats still 1 million users. Even if they got banned it's only temporary and by the time they got unbanned they could change it back. It's not a matter of Valve lack of moderation it's the fact they don't have the numbers to combat the issue. And even if they got volunteers to moderate the community that another thing to burden them with. That may be the way to go if the overwatch system proves to be successful.
All of that is nothing to take away for your guide. I just find it frustrating when people blame something like that on a company.
[QUOTE=Aide;46235624]
All of that is nothing to take away for your guide. I just find it frustrating when people blame something like that on a company.[/QUOTE]
Yes, I suppose I should've made that more clear. While I understand how incredibly difficult it is to moderate something such as the Steam community, they still have the resources to improve themselves. (Seriously, the current situation is absolutely ridiculous. It's not really about them not doing enough, it's more about them not addressing the issue at all, while at the same time not providing some kind of extremely simple to implement solution for people who just want to avoid it completely) And if not, they've clearly tread into water deeper than they should be in. However, the main thing that annoyed me was how the employee in question couldn't stay professional and give an actual explanation as to why they wouldn't implement it, but instead decided to be a sarcastic douchebag about it.
Also, just found something in the post that will cause it to not work properly, copy paste this: [URL]http://cdn[/URL] .akamai. steamstatic .com/steamcommunity/public/images/avatars/ as well as this: [URL]http://media[/URL]. steampowered .com/steamcommunity/public/images/avatars/ (remove the spaces) rather than the URLs provided in the OP.
(I can't edit it, due to the entire post disappearing when I click on "edit")
As for ubersoldier, I'll respond to you in a little bit
that's an awful a lot of effort to censor something you'd only see for a handful of seconds
also using a third party program in the back round to mess with avatars seems like a bad idea imo
[QUOTE=Rixxz2;46235746]
Also, just found something in the post that will cause it to not work properly, copy paste this: [URL]http://cdn[/URL] .akamai. steamstatic .com/steamcommunity/public/images/avatars/ as well as this: [URL]http://media[/URL]. steampowered .com/steamcommunity/public/images/avatars/ (remove the spaces) rather than the URLs provided in the OP.
(I can't edit it, due to the entire post disappearing when I click on "edit")
[/QUOTE]
it works if you right click it and select "Copy link address" rather than marking it and copying it.
[QUOTE=Rixxz2;46235044]The Steam community is full of people using avatars which I among many find unpleasant to various degrees. Regular porn, furry porn, porn depicting porn, xenomorph porn, hentai, you get the point.[/QUOTE]On a day-to-day basis I typically don't see anything that wouldn't be out of place in Sports Illustrated. What the hell kind of servers do [I]you[/I] play on?
[QUOTE=The Kins;46238215]On a day-to-day basis I typically don't see anything that wouldn't be out of place in Sports Illustrated. What the hell kind of servers do [I]you[/I] play on?[/QUOTE]
he's probably a closet furry playing on furry servers
I never said that avatars like that are extremely common in-game, because they aren't.
However, seeing as they are being used, it's a sort of russian roulette you may just want to avoid completely.
[quote=Toy_Soldier]he's probably a closet furry playing on furry servers [/quote]
I think something like that could be made into a pretty good example.
Perhaps you have a friend or a relative playing on servers mostly used by such people. The server may be generally great, maybe it's even got something that really makes it stand out.
The avatars bother you for one reason or another, though. Now you can choose to either stay away from the server completely, or try to ignore what's bothering you.
But if you're handed a tool that's able to fix, or at the very least hide the main problem, which bothers you enough, why would you choose any of the above?
[editline]15th October 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Techbot;46238195]it works if you right click it and select "Copy link address" rather than marking it and copying it.[/QUOTE]
True, didn't think about that
[QUOTE=Rixxz2;46241358]I never said that avatars like that are extremely common in-game, because they aren't.
However, seeing as they are being used, it's a sort of russian roulette you may just want to avoid completely.
I think something like that could be made into a pretty good example.
Perhaps you have a friend or a relative playing on servers mostly used by such people. The server may be generally great, maybe it's even got something that really makes it stand out.
The avatars bother you for one reason or another, though. Now you can choose to either stay away from the server completely, or try to ignore what's bothering you.
But if you're handed a tool that's able to fix, or at the very least hide the main problem, which bothers you enough, why would you choose any of the above?
[editline]15th October 2014[/editline]
True, didn't think about that[/QUOTE]
if someone was playing on a dumb 420 blaze it server with shitloads of retarded weed avatars and pictures of nude chicks as their avatars I'd make it incentive not to die so I don't have to see their avatar for all of 2 seconds
And what if the thing people consider to be the main problem isn't them being forced to see whatever it is they don't want to see (regardless of duration), but the fact said thumbnail, and it's high-res version, have been permanently stored on whatever secondary memory device they may be using?
To be perfectly honest, why does it matter at all why some people would choose to disable their avatars? It doesn't affect anyone else in the slightest
[QUOTE=Rixxz2;46241873]And what if the thing people consider to be the main problem isn't them being forced to see whatever it is they don't want to see (regardless of duration), but the fact said thumbnail, and it's high-res version, have been permanently stored on whatever secondary memory device they may be using?
To be perfectly honest, why does it matter at all why some people would choose to disable their avatars? It doesn't affect anyone else in the slightest[/QUOTE]
Hey Rixxz2, I appreciate this post. Been looking for a way to do this for a while now. I noticed today a problem with CS:GO. Deathmatch games this works perfectly, but competitive avatars can still show up. Idk if Steam uses something different to display the avatars in a competitive match because they can me watched or what, but I cant seem the find the directory to block to stop it. Any ideas/help?
It's possible that it uses a different source then, yes. I honestly only tried deathmatches and assumed the source would be the same.
I'll take a look at it when I get some time over, or you could always use Wireshark to do some sniffing of your own
Thanks for the reply. I attempted to use Wireshark.. there is a abundance of information that shows up and I am not very good at reading it to figure out the directory links, Fiddler itself doesn't see anything else showing up on its end in terms of images loading and says all the avatars attempting to load are blocking (much like when I play DM and only have [?] avatars) but theyre still showing up. I'm sure Wireshark is much better in this regard in terms of sniffing it out.. and hopefully something pops up on that end. Keep me posted if you find anything! Much appreciated with any help
[QUOTE=Rixxz2;49281016]It's possible that it uses a different source then, yes. I honestly only tried deathmatches and assumed the source would be the same.
I'll take a look at it when I get some time over, or you could always use Wireshark to do some sniffing of your own[/QUOTE]
I used Wireshark to capture a roughly 40 sec clip during the joining of a Competitive game while others were joining and avatars were showing. I tried looking it over to figure out where its getting the images form.. it may not be pulling actual images but displaying something that the CS competitive server is loading on its end and displaying?? idk if that's possible but either way I feel like there should be a way to block it from showing on my end. If you can take a look at the file and see if you can see anything yourself I would appreciate it.. the only thing I know to look for is GET commands so outside of that I'm blind as to whats going on in Wireshark lol. The file is with Fiddler4 turned on so I didn't see the usual GET jpg packets on there either.
EDIT: Forgot the capture file: [url]http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=91239417785514393661[/url]
Have you had any luck with the information? I haven't been able to find anything myself?
[QUOTE=Rixxz2;49281016]It's possible that it uses a different source then, yes. I honestly only tried deathmatches and assumed the source would be the same.
I'll take a look at it when I get some time over, or you could always use Wireshark to do some sniffing of your own[/QUOTE]
Hey Rixxz if you get a chance to help me out I would really appreciate it. I cant make heads or tails of what I've found..
Rixxz2, thanks a bunch for this. Don't mind the haters ;)
I think CSGO has changed the system now, and everything is sent through UDP/TCP packets from the server to the client.
I'll try to look into it with Wireshark. Thanks for introducing me to these tools.
Steam punishes people with avatars that break the ToS if you report them.
The moderation is far from satisfactory but I think a large chunk of that comes from people not caring enough to report in the first place.
[QUOTE=Haris1112;49385239]Rixxz2, thanks a bunch for this. Don't mind the haters ;)
I think CSGO has changed the system now, and everything is sent through UDP/TCP packets from the server to the client.
I'll try to look into it with Wireshark. Thanks for introducing me to these tools.[/QUOTE]
Hey Haris, any luck with Wireshark or how to block the UDP/TCP packets for avatars in competitive?
just report it to steam it actually works
though it only really works if a friend contacts you saying that they hate this one person and that they have hentai all over their page and that you report them
aka it's like imgur reporting with porn, you would only report the link because you hate that person not because you're actually bothered by it
[editline]30[/editline]
oh dear didn't even look at the original date.
[QUOTE=ROFLBURGER;49527704]just report it to steam it actually works
though it only really works if a friend contacts you saying that they hate this one person and that they have hentai all over their page and that you report them
[/QUOTE]
Even then it sorta kinda doesn't work at all. And as you pointed out, no, not even after all this time, nothing's changed, if anything it's gotten even worse
Not really surprising considering even Valve's customer support is extremely lacking, and I'd expect things like this to be way, way down on their priority list.
[quote=Patchell]
Thanks for the reply. I attempted to use Wireshark.. there is a abundance of information that shows up and I am not very good at reading it to figure out the directory links, Fiddler itself doesn't see anything else showing up on its end in terms of images loading and says all the avatars attempting to load are blocking (much like when I play DM and only have [?] avatars) but theyre still showing up. I'm sure Wireshark is much better in this regard in terms of sniffing it out.. and hopefully something pops up on that end. Keep me posted if you find anything! Much appreciated with any help
[/quote]
Sorry about the extremely late reply, I'd honestly forgotten about it. I promise to take a look at Wireshark tomorrow, will report back with results then.
i got a 13 week steam community ban for a reichskriegsflagge avatar, the guy who reported me had a horse vagina as an avatar
the way they handle this stuff is retarded
Alright, I took a look at the problem where avatars still manage to show in competetive CS:GO games.
Unfortunately, I currently have no idea where they're coming from. From what I can see, the only avatar resources are the ones we've already blocked, but obviously there's more than meets the eye.
I'll continue looking
[editline]19th February 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=Haris1112;49385239]
I think CSGO has changed the system now, and everything is sent through UDP/TCP packets from the server to the client.
[/QUOTE]
I missed this, you seem to be correct, although it seems like it's not only applicable to CS:GO, but every game. Blocking [URL]http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/avatars/[/URL] still gets rid of community avatars, but blocking [URL]http://media.steampowered.com/steamcommunity/public/images/avatars/[/URL] does nothing in-game.
This complicates things
Here's some info from messing around;
In wireshark, you can [I]still[/I] see HTTP GET requests for steam avatars. Analyzing these packets and blocking with Fiddler did nothing in-game.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/IUK8kpl.png[/IMG]
I also tried removing permissions from `steamwebhelper.exe`. I believe this binary helps with http queries. Removing all permissions from it caused the steam window/GUI to stop loading the store tab and community tab. Tabs that load local data worked fine like the inventory tab. Going in game, I wasn't able to see the news section anymore since that section was trying to load the CSGO blog page, but... the avatars loaded just fine inside a match.
So my conclusion is: games get avatar data from some other source :/
If the avatar data is being sent around through TCP or UDP packets, then it's likely that the packets pass around byte arrays containing pixel data.
One possible next step is using wireshark's Lua API to go through all the packets and attempt to make images out of the packets. If we find that the generated images resemble Avatars, we can analyse the packet structure which do successfully generate the images and move on from there.
There's always the fun approach of sending a box of letters to the steam hq :P
We could get pretty creative with it too
We've got to get this up and running again.
Going to spend some of my free time after work this week messing around with it
Good news! Thanks to our friend Bauxite, the problem has been solved.
Simply make a shortcut to Steam, go to the properties of the shortcut, and add "-tcp" to the target.
I.E
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/sOMrZcT.png[/IMG]
I'd never even considered the solution could be that simple
[video=youtube;3GwjfUFyY6M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GwjfUFyY6M[/video]
[QUOTE=Rixxz2;50709037]Good news! Thanks to our friend Bauxite, the problem has been solved.
Simply make a shortcut to Steam, go to the properties of the shortcut, and add "-tcp" to the target.
I.E
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/sOMrZcT.png[/IMG]
I'd never even considered the solution could be that simple
[/QUOTE]
How is it this works? Does this make it so I don't require Fiddler? or does this just fix MM games and I still need Fiddler? And do you have to be on an admin account for this -tcp to work?
Anyone? I tried this method and the images still pop up in Matchmaking games. Love to get this to work if its simple.
please forgive the necro, (i literally made an account specifically to reply to this thread.)
but while doing research on the topic, this is the constant first hit:
I've been trying to hide avatars for a while, because after like 6 years i'm finally sick of seeing gross stuff people have set "for the lols." and now that CSGO has officially gone F2P, i know its only going to get worse.
followed every step listed, including launching steam with -tcp, but unfortunately nothing seems to still be working. if somebody would be so kind as to let me know if this still works and i'm just doing it wrong, or if its no longer a working solution, it would be much appreciated!
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