Valve has recently announced that they will be making changes to user privacy settings on the Steam marketplace, which will hide certain user information by default. This comes at a time where the public’s perception of social platforms have become skewed and the trust between users and companies are vastly becoming thinner by the line.
Steam Changes
“You can now select who can view your profile’s “game details”; which includes the list of games you have purchased or wishlisted, along with achievements and playtime,” said one of the Steam team members. “This setting also controls whether you’re seen as “in-game” and the title of the game you are playing.”
Users will be able to manage how their profiles are viewed by friends, or the wider Steam Community. In addition, you will be able to choose certain settings for your game profiles. This includes the option to keep your total game playtime private. Users can keep their game hour logs private from other people from seeing it. For example, if you played Final Fantasy XV for 2000+ hours, you can keep that private and no one will be able to view it besides yourself.
Valve will also be implementing the “invisible” mode which will allow you to go invisible while using Steam. You’ll appear as offline, but you’ll still be able to view your friends list, send and receive messages.
Effects of these changes
With these new updates to privacy settings, companies such as Steam Spy will now be unviable for tracking how well certain games are doing on the Steam marketplace. This was a very useful tool to gauge how much interest certain gaming titles have received over time but with the new privacy settings, data cannot be easily scraped as it once was.
The founder of Steam Spy tweeted out, “Valve just made a change to their privacy settings, making games owned by Steam users hidden by default. Steam Spy relied on this information being visible by default and won’t be able to operate anymore.”
Valve just made a change to their privacy settings, making games owned by Steam users hidden by default.
Steam Spy relied on this information being visible by default and won't be able to operate anymore.https://t.co/0ejZgRQ6Kd
— Steam Spy (@Steam_Spy) April 11, 2018
While some people were quite disheartened by the sudden changes and Steam Spy no longer being operable, others agreed with Steam and their privacy changes. Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games was one of them. Sweeney replied to the post by saying, “A good privacy policy decision by Valve. A physical or digital retailer shouldn’t expose anyone’s purchase history publicly by default.”
A good privacy policy decision by Valve. A physical or digital retailer shouldn’t expose anyone’s purchase history publicly by default.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) April 11, 2018
Let us know your thoughts on the sudden privacy changes on Steam.
