How to recover a hacked Steam account
The nightmare of every hardcore PC gamer: getting their Steam account hacked. You may have CS:GO skins worth thousands of euros, expensive Rocket League items, or tons of Steam games you have spent thousands of hours playing. When talking about hacked Steam accounts, there are many ways a Steam account can be hacked. Some might only be partially hacked, where someone unauthorized has gotten access, while others risk getting their whole Steam account hijacked, where the password, email address, and/or phone number have been changed.
Whatever may have happened to your account, this is the guide for you.
Unauthorized access
If you discover that someone has gotten access to your account without your knowledge and permission, you most likely are either a victim of a phishing scam or an iCloud hack.
It is important to check if your email and phone number have been changed, or if it is still your own details. You can check these details by clicking here. If the details have not been changed do the following in order to recover full access of your account - otherwise, read the next section:
Check your Recent Login History.
Change your Steam password by going to Account Details, finding the section Account Security, and pressing Change my password.
Revoke your Steam Web API key by going to this link and clicking Revoke My Steam Web API Key.
Deauthorize devices by going to Account Details, finding the section Account Security and pressing Manage Steam Guard. Once there, press Deauthorize all other devices.
If your Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator is linked to an Apple device, follow the steps in our blog post about the iCloud hack, instead of the steps above.
Hijacked Steam account
If you are unable to log in to your Steam account or discover that your password, email address, and/or phone number have been changed (you can check it by clicking here), your Steam account has been hijacked.
If this is the case, you should have received one or more emails stating that there have been made changes to your Steam Guard. If you are not able to find an email like this, skip to the next step. If you can find an email like the ones mentioned above, open one of them and press Lock my account. Follow the procedure shown on the screen. Once your account has been locked, proceed to the next step.
Now it is time to recover your account. To do so, proceed to this link and type in your Steam account username (this is the username you use to log in to Steam, not necessarily your public profile name). Press I no longer have access to my Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator. Click ‘I no longer have access to this email address’. You will now be shown a formula where you can fill in information about your Steam account. Please fill out as much as possible, as this will help Steam Support to recover your hacked Steam account, kick out the hijackers and make sure that you will have full control again.
For the text field “Anything else we should know about the issue you're having?”, describe what has happened to your account - did you possibly log in to a phishing site, could your iCloud have been hacked, or did you find a virus on your computer?
Do not just write “My account was hacked” - make sure your case stands out. Another way of wording the same thing could be “I suspect my account has been the victim of a hijack.”
Once you have submitted the form to Steam Support, you should receive a reply within 24 hours.
Scan your computer
Scan your computer
If you have followed any of the guides above, you should now either have full control of your account or be in a position where you are waiting for Steam Support to send you a reply. No matter the situation you are in, we recommend you scan your computer with an anti-virus program to make sure that no unwanted/malicious software is running on your PC.
In order to prevent getting your Steam account hacked in the future, we strongly advise you to read our blog post regarding phishing scams and the iCloud hack, as these are the most common ways that Steam accounts get hacked.
