I quit Rust nine times. Every one of them lasted until Thursday.

The last time, I was farming sulfur at half three in the morning on a Wednesday. Work at eight.

I'd been at it about four hours. I remember standing at the furnace waiting for it to cook and thinking, completely calmly, no drama about it: I don't want to be here. Not tired. I didn't want to be doing it, and I hadn't for weeks.

I wasn't playing a game. I was doing unpaid maintenance on a base Facepunch were going to delete on Thursday anyway.

I've quit Rust nine times. I say nine. I don't actually know. Enough that the boys stopped reacting when I said it.

That's the part that got me in the end. Not the hours. I've wasted more time on worse. It's that I'd said it out loud, to people, and then didn't do it. Nine times. After a while you start to feel like a bit of a joke.

The short version: Steam already had a free lock. I built the missing half: somebody else holds the PIN and the recovery inbox. When the PIN is requested, I release it after the delay chosen at setup. That's it.

Everything I installed, I removed

I did the whole circuit. Uninstalled it, which lasted until Thursday. Deleted the shortcut, which I'd like on record as the stupidest thing I have ever done, because Steam has a search bar.

Then blockers. Cold Turkey, the hosts file, one that makes you type a whole paragraph out to unlock it. I typed the paragraph.

They've all got the same hole in them and it isn't a technical one. I installed it, so I can uninstall it. Every blocker ever made asks the bloke who wants to play to also be the bloke who stops him, and at 1am there's only one of them awake.

Someone will tell you to delete your Steam account. Don't. It takes the whole library with it, the wallet, every key you've ever redeemed, and it doesn't come back. Anyone handing out that advice hasn't got a library.

The lock was already in Steam

Family View I found by accident, looking for something else. It's free, it's official, it's been sat in Steam for years, and not one person I've asked knew it was there.

You don't block a game. You pick the ones you're allowed and the rest simply aren't there. No icon, no library entry, nothing sat on the screen to click on and feel bad about.

• The PIN has nothing to do with your account password. Knowing one gets you nowhere near the other.
• Anything you add to your library later is excluded automatically. That's Valve's wording, not mine. So the 2am move, just buy it again, it's not even that expensive, gets you a second copy you also can't open.
• It reaches the store, community content, and friends and chat as well. Same screen, separate switches.

That last one I didn't expect, and it's the one that matters. Nobody reinstalls because an icon was sat on their desktop. They reinstall because the group chat went off on a Thursday night.

Four digits I already knew

Then I got to the end of the setup and saw the problem with all of it.

The PIN is four digits and I'd just typed it in myself. So I knew it. I could undo the whole lot in about six seconds, and on a Thursday, I would.

So I went looking for the bit that's supposed to stop you doing that, fully expecting there not to be one. And Steam just told me. It's written on the screen where you set the recovery email:

I sat there for a bit with that one.

That's Valve. In their own product. Telling you the recovery inbox is the actual lock, and that it isn't supposed to be you holding it.

And it holds. Once it's switched on you can't get back in to change that address without the PIN. There is a way out, and it's the first thing Valve offers you - anyone can trigger it, no PIN needed - but it sends the disable link to the recovery address. So the exit's there. It's just on somebody else's side of the table.

Which means it needs a person

A parent, a partner, a mate who'll take four digits off you and then not give them back at 1am on a Thursday when you're being very reasonable about it.

I tried. I got about four words in.

You have to sit somebody down and tell them you can't be trusted with a video game. Then you have to watch their face while they work out what to do with that. I bottled it and talked about something else.

That's the real reason nobody does this. Not that the lock is hard. It's free and it takes five minutes. It's that the free version has that conversation in it.

So I did the other half

That's all this is. I am the person who holds the PIN, so a mate does not have to.

• I make the PIN and you never see it. It goes straight to your clipboard for the one minute you need it. It isn't printed on a screen anywhere at any point, including mine.
• You get a recovery address on my domain, and that's what goes in the field Valve is talking about up there.
• You do the setup yourself, in your own browser, logged into your own account. I never ask for your password. Steam's own agreement says you're not to give it to anybody, and a service that asked would be asking you to break it.
• Then I do nothing. That's the job. It isn't much of a job. It's just the one you can't do yourself.

You'll want it back

Everyone will, at some point. I'd rather say that now than have it arrive as a surprise later.

You ask on your dashboard and you get it. The only thing in the way is the delay you picked when you set it up - a day, three days, or a week. No reason needed. I won't ask for one and I won't try to talk you out of it. I'm a delay, not a gate. I can't make it shorter either. There's no button on my side. That's the whole of what you're paying for.

If your term runs out it releases on its own. If you cancel, or want your money back, same delay and then it's yours. And if I stop checking in for a fortnight, every PIN releases without anybody doing anything, me included.

There's another wipe coming. There's always another wipe - Facepunch put the dates up a year in advance, which is either helpful or cruel depending on the week you're having.

That part was never up to either of us.