Authentication with Steam

Catena can authenticate players

Prerequisites

Before configuring Catena to authenticate users with the Steam, you must have an App ID and create an API key on Steamworks using "Users and Permissions" and a group.

You will need your App ID and the API key from to configure Catena. This applies to either web browser login or game clients launched from Steam.

Catena configuration for web browser login

Open the appsettings for your environment and look for the Catena authentication service configuration section which contains a section for Steam (PROVIDER_STEAM_WEB). If the section does not exist, you may need to create it.

Fill AppId and ApiKey with the values from Steamworks. The App ID is an integer, not a string, and should not have quotes. Set the RedirectUri to the one shown in the example below as a starting point and make sure IsEnabled is set to true.

For example, in appsettings.Development.json:

{
  "Catena": {
    "Authentication": {
      "PROVIDER_STEAM_WEB": {
        "AppId": <your app ID>,
        "ApiKey": "<your API key>",
        "RedirectUri": "/api/v1/authentication/PROVIDER_STEAM_WEB/callback",
        "IsEnabled": true
      }
    }
  }
}

Make sure your appsettings.Development.json is added to .gitignore

Setting secrets in production

For a live production deployment, you don't want to expose your secrets in the appsettings file.

Catena provides 2 potential solutions for this.

• Inline Encryption - This allows you to encrypt values in your appsettings.json so it can be commited and shared across the team with only one shared password stored offline.
• Configuring Dokku Secrets - Using dokku, setup environment variables that are read in by the app

When using Dokku secrets, you can map the nested JSON values to a new environment variable.

For example, AppId maps too:

Catena__Authentication__Validators__PROVIDER_STEAM_WEB__AppId

Then ApiKey maps too:

Catena__Authentication__Validators__PROVIDER_STEAM_WEB__ApiKey

If deploying via the AWS deployment guide, add these to your dokku-secrets.env file and run ./set-dokku-secrets.sh. For more details view the Secrets management page.

Catena configuration for Steam login

Open the appsettings for your environment and look for the Catena authentication service configuration section which contains a section for Steam (PROVIDER_STEAM). If the section does not exist, you may need to create it.

Fill AppId and ApiKey with the values from Steamworks. The App ID is an integer, not a string, and should not have quotes. Add an auth identity; this can usually be set to "Catena". Make sure IsEnabled is set to true.

For example, in appsettings.Development.json:

{
  "Catena": {
    "Authentication": {
      "Validators": {
        "PROVIDER_STEAM": {
          "SteamAuthIdentity": "Catena",
          "AppId": "<your app ID>",
          "ApiKey": "<your API key>",
          "IsEnabled": true
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Make sure your appsettings.Development.json is added to .gitignore

Setting secrets in production

For a live production deployment, you don't want to expose your secrets in the appsettings file.

Catena provides 2 potential solutions for this.

• Inline Encryption - This allows you to encrypt values in your appsettings.json so it can be commited and shared across the team with only one shared password stored offline.
• Configuring Dokku Secrets - Using dokku, setup environment variables that are read in by the app

When using Dokku secrets, you can map the nested JSON values to a new environment variable.

For example, AppId maps too:

Catena__Authentication__Validators__PROVIDER_STEAM__AppId

Then ApiKey maps too:

Catena__Authentication__Validators__PROVIDER_STEAM__ApiKey

If deploying via the AWS deployment guide, add these to your dokku-secrets.env file and run ./set-dokku-secrets.sh. For more details and instructions on how to rotate secrets, view the Secrets management page.