&gt;The answer is that the cost of electricity is greater than running this game, even if it&#x27;s run in the background.<p>There&#x27;s a 3rd party application that most serious card idlers use, it uses negligible processing power, just pings the SteamWorks API to say you&#x27;re playing the game. So if you have steam open in the background, I doubt this adds more visible cost than having a pinned tab in chrome.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.steamidlemaster.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.steamidlemaster.com&#x2F;</a>