Summary
- Steam may be adding a new feature that allows users to mark games as private on their profiles, granting them more control over their privacy.
- This feature would enable users to hide games from their profiles completely, making it appear as if they never owned the game.
- Despite Steam's leniency towards explicit content, they drew a line in 2021 by banning cryptocurrency and NFT games, making it surprising that they haven't implemented this privacy feature sooner.
Leaks suggest that Steam may be adding a new feature soon that will help users enjoy more private gaming sessions. Although Valve already offers users a wealth of privacy options on the platform, one specific feature has been missing from Steam all these years.
Since its introduction in 2003, Steam has steadily grown from a simple game marketplace and launcher into one of the most feature-rich, pro-consumer platforms on the market. Case in point, regardless of how lucrative trading expensive Counter-Strike skins is for Valve, users can opt to forego participating in the Community Marketplace by hiding their Steam library and in-game item inventories with just a few clicks.
Recently, SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik uncovered a potential new Steam feature that may offer users even more granular control over their privacy. In a post shared on X (formerly Twitter), Djundik stated that Steam may be working on a new feature that will let users mark games as private on their profile. Given Djundik's track record for discovering planned Steam updates early, there is a high chance this feature is actually coming.
Although the specifics are unclear, the feature will likely allow users to hide games from their profiles completely. For other users, it would be as if the player hiding the game never owned it at all. However, the feature may likely have some blind spots concerning Steam's cross-app integrations. For example, Steam Deck users on Discord and their desktop-bound counterparts may likely have to go into the app's settings to make sure the game is hidden on Discord as well.
Unlike other online video game marketplaces, Steam has eased up on its policy regarding games with explicit content in recent years, only barring titles featuring illegal or deliberately aggravating content from being sold on the platform. Surprisingly, despite its lax approach towards explicit content, the platform drew a hard line in 2021 when Steam banned cryptocurrency and NFT games from being sold on the marketplace.
Considering the types of games that have proliferated on Steam in the past decade, it's a bit surprising to see Steam take this long to implement such a feature. It's far from a small niche either, as an adults-only game even climbed near the top of Steam's top-sellers list in 2021, for the entire user base to see. If Djundik is right, then it's likely that won't be the last time something like that happens.
- Brand
- Valve
- Original Release Date
- September 12, 2003
- Original MSRP (USD)
- N/A
- Hardware Versions
- Steam
- Weight
- N/A
Steam is a digital video game storefront and program developed by Valve that allows gamers to purchase, play, and mod their titles all through one convenient program.
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