Steam – What does a friend having their status as Snooze mean

I believe the ? means that Steam isn't sure if it's synced with the Steam Cloud. When you launch the game, or if you toggle cloud support for a game, the icon turns from the "question mark" to just a cloud icon. I tested this with a couple of games in my library, and this seemed to be a pattern. I can't find any Steam FAQs on this topic, so this is more of an educated guess backed up by some research.

I presume that on launch, Steam checks in with the cloud servers to see if there's any updated information to sync, and then it "knows" that the data is properly synchronized. At other times, it's possible that it has changed since the last time Steam checked, so it shows the question mark.

This done via the Steam Protocol. It is installed on each system that has steam installed and can be used to transmit commands to steam by creating a link that begins with steam://. For example, shortcuts create by Steam always contain the link steam://run/appid.

Further information about all possible commands can be found here: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_browser_protocol

For changing your status you might want to utilize these commands:

steam://friends/status/away
Sets status as away

steam://friends/status/busy
Sets status as busy

steam://friends/status/trade
Sets status as looking to trade

steam://friends/status/play
Sets status as looking to play

steam://friends/status/offline
Sets status as offline

steam://friends/status/online
Sets status as online

In case nothing happens when you activate such a link, you have to reinstall the Steam Protocol. This can be done this way:

• Click Start ▶ All Programs ▶ Accessories
• Right-click on Command Prompt and then click "Run as administrator..."
• In the command prompt, enter the following command, including quotation marks: "C:\Program Files\Steam\bin\SteamService.exe" /repair
• Note: C:\Program Files\Steam\ is the default installation directory for Steam - change this to the correct directory if you installed Steam to a different location. 64-bit systems will use Program Files (x86) instead of Program Files.
• This process will take a few minutes to complete. Once finished, the message "Steam Client Service repair completed." will appear.
• The issue may be fixed at this point, however it is recommended you reboot your computer before testing if the repair resolved the problem.

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