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Pidgin OpenSteamWorks is a plugin that allows you to chat with your Steam friends from Pidgin.

Why use it? Well, if you're both a Steam and Pidgin user, you may find it more convenient to chat with your Steam friends from Pidgin, without having to open Steam, especially since the Steam Linux client is very resource hungry.

The plugin has initially used Open Steamworks, an open implementation of Valve's Steamworks API but that required Steam to run in the background so with version 1.0, the plugin has switched to the Steam mobile API so it's no longer needs Steam to work.

The Steam plugin for Pidgin plugin is available for Linux and Mac OSX and there's also an older version available for Windows (however, the old Windows version requires Steam to run in the background).


How to install and use Pidgin OpenSteamWorks plugin


Note: the instructions below are for Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint and derivatives however, they should work on other Linux distributions as well, with a minor modification: skip the "apt install" parts and instead, install wget, unzip and libjson-glib using your distro's package manager.

1. Download and install the Pidgin OpenSteamWorks plugin:

32bit:
sudo apt install wget libjson-glib-1.0-0
cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/EionRobb/pidgin-opensteamworks/releases/download/1.6.1/libsteam64-1.6.1.so
sudo cp libsteam-1.6.1.so /usr/lib/purple-2/

64bit:
sudo apt install wget libjson-glib-1.0-0
cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/EionRobb/pidgin-opensteamworks/releases/download/1.6.1/libsteam64-1.6.1.so
sudo cp libsteam64-1.6.1.so /usr/lib/purple-2/
2. Install icons for the Pidgin OpenSteamWorks plugin
sudo apt install unzip
cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/EionRobb/pidgin-opensteamworks/raw/master/steam-mobile/releases/icons.zip
sudo unzip icons.zip -d /usr/share/pixmaps/pidgin/protocols/

For Fedora and Windows installation instructions, see the Pidgin OpenSteamWorks plugin GitHub page.

Once installed, restart Pidgin, from its menu select Accounts > Manage Accounts, then click Add and under Protocol select "Steam" and add your username and password, etc.:

pidgin steam

Once you click "Add", you should receive an email from Steam Support with a code you need to enter in Pidgin to authorize it to connect with Steam:

pidgin steam

Enter the correct code, click OK and that's it. You should now be able to chat with your Steam friends from Pidgin.