Steam Workshop

Steam Workshop lets players upload, browse and subscribe to user generated content (UGC) such as maps or mods. This guide uses the SteamCore|UGC nodes.

Prerequisites

• Your own Steam App ID, see Using Your Own App ID.
• Steam is running and the game is launched as a Standalone Game or a packaged build.

Step 1: Enable the Workshop

1. On the Steamworks partner site, go to Workshop → General, enable the Workshop and check Enable ISteamUGC for file transfer.
2. Go to Application → Steam Cloud and set a byte quota and file count. Workshop files count against the Steam Cloud settings.
3. Publish the changes.

Uploading an Item

1. Call Create Item with your App ID as Consumer App ID and File Type set to Community. Store Data → Published File ID.

2. Call Start Item Update with your App ID and the Published File ID. It returns an update handle.

3. Set the item's data with the update handle:

   Node	Description
   Set Item Title	The item's title.
   Set Item Description	The item's description.
   Set Item Content	The absolute path to a folder. Everything in the folder is uploaded.
   Set Item Preview	The absolute path to a preview image.
   Set Item Tags	Tags players can filter by.
   Set Item Visibility	Public, friends only, private or unlisted.

4. Call Submit Item Update with the update handle and a change note.

While the upload is running, call Get Item Update Progress with the update handle, for example from a timer, to show a progress bar.

Timeout

The Timeout input of Submit Item Update defaults to 10 seconds. Uploads often take longer, so set it to a higher value, such as 300 seconds.

Workshop Legal Agreement

If Data → bUserNeedsToAcceptWorkshopLegalAgreement is true, the item stays hidden until the player accepts the Workshop agreement. Open it with Activate Game Overlay to Web Page:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/workshoplegalagreement

To update an existing item later, start again from step 2 with the same Published File ID.

Using Subscribed Items

1. Call Get Subscribed Items to get the Published File IDs the player is subscribed to.
2. For each item, call Get Item State. If the states contain Installed, call Get Item Install Info. Folder is where the item's content is on disk.
3. If the item is not installed yet or Needs Update is set, call Download Item and use Get Item Install Info when it completes.

What you do with the content depends on your game, for example loading map files or mounting .pak files from the folder.

Players subscribe in the Steam Workshop or in your game with Subscribe Item and Unsubscribe Item.

Browsing Items

1. Create a query:
   • Create Query All UGC Request for all items, for example the most popular ones.
   • Create Query User UGC Request for one player's items, for example their published or subscribed items.
2. Call Send Query UGC Request with the query handle.
3. On completion, loop from 0 to Data → Num Results Returned − 1 and call Get Query UGC Result for each index. Details contains the title, description, owner and more. Get Query UGC Preview URL returns the preview image URL.
4. Call Release Query UGC Request when you are done with the results.

The Page input of the create nodes selects the result page. Steam returns up to 50 results per page.

Troubleshooting

• Create Item fails: make sure the Workshop is enabled and published in Steamworks, and that Consumer App ID is your own App ID.
• Submit Item Update fails: check that the content folder and preview image paths are absolute and exist, and that the preview image is within the Steam Cloud quota.