Steam: How to Fix "Too Many Activation Attempts"

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The Steam digital storefront is an extremely popular platform, and with popularity often comes problems as well. Users who have been splurging during sales might encounter activation errors and cannot redeem their games. This guide will explain what causes the “Too Many Activation Attempts” error message on Steam and how you might be able to fix the issue.

“Too Many Activation Attempts” Error on Steam, Explained

“There have been too many recent unsuccessful activation attempts from this account. Please wait and try your product code again later.” This error message will appear in Steam when you try to activate a lot of game keys within a short time. As you can expect, the phrase indicates that you have reached the limit for activation attempts.

While Valve itself doesn’t give users proper documentation regarding the Too Many Activation Attempts error (likely to avoid abuse from malicious third-party), according to the community and Fanatical, Steam has a 20-25 key redemption limit per short time period. Then the activation limit could be lowered every time you enter invalid keys — and codes for games that are already in your Library counts as invalid keys.

Meanwhile, the cooldown for the activation limit seems to be 60 minutes or 1 hour. But some Steam users claimed that they can redeem keys again after 45 minutes.

“If you get a few failed attempts in a row (product already owned counts as failures apparently), it could be less than 25. I think you get put on the cooldown instantly after failing 6 times. Although Steam didn’t specify, the cooldown seems to be exactly 1 hour.” – A Reddit user.

So, Can You Fix the “Too Many Activation Attempts” Error on Steam?

Unfortunately, since this is a system that was put in place to deal with brute-forcing attempts and reduce the possibility of server error when there are too many users that activate tons of keys at the same time (from various Steam Sales and indie bundles) on Steam, there is no way to fix the “Too Many Activation Attempts” error message.

Some sites might suggest you reinstall Steam, but I genuinely don’t recommend it, considering the cooldown to your account happens server-side and not from your PC. All you can do is wait until the cooldown period is over, which usually lasts for around an hour, and then enter the codes again.