Steam Update Their Privacy Settings, Kill Off Steam Spy

Internet privacy is the topic du jour at the moment so every company will be taking a good look at how they protect their users data and that includes Valve. A blog post reveals that they have enhanced the privacy settings on Steam and they have also set everyone’s data to be hidden by default.

Unfortunately, Steam Spy relied on people not hiding the games they owned and what they were playing so in one simple step Valve have killed Steam Spy and they can no longer function. Here’s the blog post from Valve.

Today’s update expands on your Profile Privacy Settings Page, giving you more control over the privacy of your Steam account. With more detailed descriptions of what profile information is included in each category, you will be able to manage how you are viewed by your friends, or the wider Steam Community.

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. This setting also controls whether you’re seen as “in-game” and the title of the game you are playing.

Additionally, regardless of which setting you choose for your profile’s game details, you now have the option to keep your total game playtime private. You no longer need to nervously laugh it off as a bug when your friends notice the 4,000+ hours you’ve put into Ricochet.

Looking ahead a little, we are also working on a new “invisible” mode in addition to the already existing “online”, “away” and “offline” presence options. If you choose to set yourself to invisible, you’ll appear as offline, but you’ll still be able to view your friends list, send and receive messages. Sometimes you’re feeling social, and sometimes you’re not; this setting should help Steam users be social on their own terms. We hope to have this feature ready for beta release soon.


Source: Steam / Twitter

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1 Comment

  1. Never liked how Steam profiles were tracked in the first place, since I’m sure it wasn’t just Steam Spy that benefited from that though. It’ll be nice though to have better control with whats hidden as with setting game details just hides everything than like only checking it to show achievements or having the game title to be displayed.

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