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Changes to Steam add More Privacy

After the Facebook privacy scandal, Valve are making changes to how Steam will share data.

By Three of Seven Thu 12 Apr, 2018 2:54 PM - Last Updated: Thu 12 Apr, 2018 3:50 PM
In light of Facebook being caught out with users data being gathered by a third party, Valve plan to make steps to increase user privacy on the Steam platform as well. Although it could just be a case of coincidental timing, as Valve have suffered with breaches in the past, such as Christmas 2015, which saw a lot of private data being seen, although this data wasn't public information.

The blog post Valve made on the changes yesterday are about controlling your profile settings. So you can set what you want hidden, and what you want visible, as well as how visible. Your game library also won't be public anymore, so this has the downside in that Steam Spy will no longer be a viable way of tracking how games are played/bought, as such, is no longer going to be operating, old data will still be available.

If you are interested in the interview from the Steam Spy owner, you can click here to read that over at Eurogamer, I would say it is worth a read for an extra level of insight into the changes made.

One other change listed in the blog post that could be of interest is the "Invisible" mode, which should work different to the current "Offline" mode, in which you would still be able to play games that require internet access, but you wouldn't show up as playing a game. This could be handy if you don't want to be disturbed while enjoying your favourite visual novel science fiction game! Of course, you can't hide specific games, or playtime on games yet, perhaps they might add that in future, like they do with screenshots and workshop items.

But what do you think, is this a positive step forward for online privacy, or just a move to appease the masses?

WRITTEN & EDITED BY Three of Seven - rena.hobden@ufplanets.com
1 Comment
Thu 12 Apr, 2018 8:58 PM
Thanks for the amazing article three!

I think it is a great idea, and I think Steam is doing this both to take a positive step forward for online privacy and to appease the masses.