[BUG] The “Show purchase date” option no longer works

[przemo20]

Expected Behavior

AS should display the purchase date on the game's store page for a game that you own

Actual Behavior

Nothing is shown next to the “<Game Name> is already in your Steam library” text, but when I open the browser console, I see “Failed to retrieve purchase date”

Not sure if this is broken temporarily (considering the ongoing Steam Winter Sale), or the recent changes to the Steam website broke this.

Screenshot

Steps to Reproduce the Problem

1. Log in to Steam
2. Open AS options page and make sure that the “Show purchase date” option (in the App page tab and under the App page section) is enabled
3. Open a store page for any game you own
4. Scroll down to the “<Game Name> is already in your Steam library” banner

Specifications

• Augmented Steam Version: 4.5.0
• Browser Version: Google Chrome 143.0.7499.170 (64-bit)

[tfedor]

I've checked, it's not broken, it's just Steam being Steam.

Basically how this works is that we load and parse https://store.steampowered.com/account/licenses/ in background, getting title and purchase date from that, and storing in database. That is then queried.

It works, except for when it doesn't. There are multiple cases when this may not work, for me, I found these two:

1. I own Europa Universalis IV. I bought it as Europa Universalis IV Extreme Edition, which is also marked in the licenses page. But obviously that won't match the title check. Moreover, Extreme Edition no longer exists, even.
2. I own Rick of Rain. The licenses page list that, but on app page Steam says "Risk of Rain (2013)", because they renamed the app page. There's still the sub with original name though.

I'm considering checking subs on the app page and try to check for all titles that I find, but I'm not sure if it's worth it.

[przemo20]

You could get the purchase date for an individual app, by checking the https://help.steampowered.com/wizard/HelpWithGame/?appid=<AppID> page, and not worrying about the package name that was activated, although this page can list multiple dates:

Not sure if this information is helpful.

EDIT:
There is also a way to check the purchase date through the Steam Client console, by running the licenses_for_app <AppId> command, but that's probably only available in the console, and browser extensions can't use that.

[tfedor]

I didn't know about that, but that has a different problem - it requires separate login. So we would have that red login warning appearing again.

[tfedor]

I'm gonna leave this for now, not sure what to do.

There are two possible ways how to improve this:

1. less robust, but potentially simpler - the one I suggested, check packages on site and try to match them against what we have. The issue there is with localizations, because there's no clean way to do it without additional request, because titles are prefixed, usually with "Buy". Which breaks at localizations. Alternatively we could fetch packages from API, but that's additional request, and I don't really know in how many cases it would help.

2. better way would be to use data from help page, issue being it required login from me first time I visited it, so that would have to be somehow solved, potentially user would have to be asked to go there and login (admittedly I didn't need to go through full login process, just click on login, so it does know about my other session somehow). Still, it means it probably can break.

I've also checked protobufs to see whether I can find some API request that would have purchase date, but I didn't find one.

[milroneth]

Regarding whether it's worth it, it happens on a lot of my games, so I don't suppose it's rare. I had never realised why until now, but it makes sense with the current system.

The data from the help page is still an additional request as it has to be read per appid. However, I don't think I have ever seen the support site requiring a separate login, it's on the steampowered domain. I've only ever seen me half logged-in between steampowered and steamcommunity, and even that is always a single click on login if the authentication server has you logged in (which is the case if you are logged in at least on one steam site).

Could it be that you happened to be logged-out on the store when you tried it? Steam is, well Steam.

PS: I checked. New Private window, visited store.steampowered.com, logged in, went to the licenses page, then immediately jumped to a help URL with appid and didn't need to do anything, I was logged in already. Visiting my profile after that still wanted me to login as it's on the steamcommunity domain.

I think it's safe to use.

[tfedor]

Alright, I'll try to implement this for 4.6.0 and we'll see.

[tfedor]

Ok, this is done now, but I was correct with login.

When you dont have a steamLogin cookie on help page, Steam will show you as logged out. When you click sign in button, it will log you in without needing to put any credentials. So I guess cookies can get out of sync for store and help.

In that case, I'll just show link to help page. You can test it in this build. Also, I'm not sure if locales will cause any problems or not, if they do, I'll have solution for that.

https://github.com/IsThereAnyDeal/AugmentedSteam/actions/runs/20661818468

[milroneth]

Tried it, had to click "View purchase date" once, which took me to the help page but did not require any logins, I was already logged in, subsequent app page views load the date in the page.

I don't know what causes you to need to login while in my case it is always logged in as long as store is logged in, but this seems to be working fine and be safe/robust even if logins are not synced.

EDIT: I'm on Firefox, in case that matters.

EDIT2: Is there a reason you chose the HelpWithGameTechnicalIssue page instead of HelpWithGame as an endpoint? It presents more information that can be confusing to someone that doesn't know why they're there, but both display the exact same infobox with the date above.

Regarding Locales, the old version would show 21 Apr, 2022, the new one shows me 21/04/2022 which I theoretically prefer, but can be ambiguous if both numbers up to 12, date formats on Steam are a mess and I never know which one is US style and which one isn't. Neither of the above is my system date format which is set to the universal 2022-04-21 that is always my preferred format.