Valve’s New Privacy Policy: A Step Forward or Just Damage Control?

Goodbye, Steam spy!

With the current privacy settings Steam users can assign different levels of anonymity to their profile. This means that they can decide whether their community profile can be seen by everyone, only their friends or nobody at all. Furthermore, it’s possible to fine-tune the settings, for instance allowing you to showcase your Steam trading cards to the world but keep the details of your game library and playtime hidden. However, currently screenshots and workshop items (aka mods) are reviewed on a per-item basis, which could mean some serious work for those who have a lot to show on this front.

Privacy comes at a cost, though. The first victim of Valve’s latest changes is the popular service Steam Spy, which delivered valuable information on game ownership and estimated playtime. The data collected by Steam Spy helped gaming journalists, developers and players get hands-on information about any given Steam game’s popularity and its player base. Unfortunately, the past tense is important here since the site has announced the end of the service. Since the new changes set the privacy settings to “friends only” by default, the site won’t be able to pull the relevant information anymore, meaning that their purpose is obsolete.

It was about time

At the moment the only option is to set the profile as “offline”, which in turn locks you out from chatting. Invisibility is a welcome addition, but Valve shouldn’t really be congratulated for it since it’s been a standard feature in every messaging app for decades. We can’t shake the feeling that the reason behind Valve’s sudden change of heart is the privacy controversy caused by Facebook…

Should I risk using a VPN?

Whether or not your information is safe with Steam is undecided as Valve has a tarnished history when it comes to privacy. For instance, it was the center of the attention during the Christmas period of 2015 due to the infamous account-swapping incident. After the service was hit by a DDoS attack a glitch occurred in the system, messing up user profiles and meaning that when people logged in they were instead shown the profile screen of someone else. The bug was quickly remedied and the company got in touch with everyone whose account might have been compromised, but a glaring privacy issue all the same.

Usually we would recommend a VPN to encrypt and secure your information, but with Steam the situation is a bit more complex. Valve’s terms of use strictly forbids the use of VPNs in conjunction with their service. Going against this rule risks a permanent ban, potentially denying access to the games that you’ve purchased. On the other hand, many users debate that Steam won’t come for you if you keep your head down, adding that even region-locked gamescan be played this way. In theory, if you don’t discuss the VPN business with anyone and don’t access games with any regional matchmaking, then you might fly under the radar.