Guide Paladins — Force Private Profile Status via Steam Depot Downgrade

[byte_corvus]

Tired of sweaty players checking your win rate and flaming you before the match even starts?
Setting your Paladins profile to private used to be a standard option, but Hi-Rez has made it a headache to toggle. This method leverages a Steam depot downgrade to access a legacy client build where the privacy flag can still be switched. Since this setting is tied to your account server-side, it persists even after you go back to the current live build.

Prerequisites
You will need a way to pull older manifests from Steam. Most people use the SteamDepotDownloaderGUI for this.

Step-by-Step Execution

1. Grab the SteamDepotDownloaderGUI from GitHub:
   You cant view this link please login.
2. In the tool, input the following technical details:
   - App ID: 444090
   - Depot ID: 444091
   - Manifest ID: 7963463582624121846 (This corresponds to the Corvus patch phase; check SteamDB if you need a different legacy build).
3. Once the download finishes, navigate to your binaries folder: Binaries\Win64.
4. Create a desktop shortcut for PaladinsEAC.exe and append the following string to the Target field:
   

   -anon -pid=402 -eac_launcher_settings settings64.json -seekfreeloadingPCConsole -eac_dir -replayfile= -COOKFORDEMO -log

5. Open gameversion.txt in the binaries folder and update the string to the current live version (e.g., "6.4.5302.0") to bypass version mismatch kicks.
6. Fix the EAC directory structure: Copy the Launcher folder from Paladins\Binaries\EasyAntiCheat and drop it into Win64\EasyAntiCheat.
7. Open settings64.json in a text editor. Locate the "executable" line and change it from "Win64//Paladins.exe" to "Paladins.exe".
8. Launch the game using your modified shortcut, head into the in-game configurations, and toggle your profile to Private.

Technical Troubleshooting

Spoiler: Architecture Notes

- The -anon flag is vital here to prevent the client from trying to sync fully with the current Steam API which might block the older build.
- If you are on a 32-bit system, perform the folder movements in the Win32 directory instead of Win64.
- If the launcher crashes, ensure your EAC launcher settings filename in the shortcut matches the actual .json filename in your folder.

Once the setting is confirmed, you can delete the old depot files. Your stats are now hidden from external trackers and in-game stalkers.

Anyone found a way to automate this manifest pull via console to avoid the GUI overhead?