Hide games from showing that you own them.

[Humz]

A feature that allows you to hide that you own certain games. It outwardly shows that you don't own and don't play those games to friends. This could be done using the tagging feature, where a certain tag group could be marked as private.

If hidden, the game will not appear on your user profile to your friends (recent activity, games list, inventory, badges, screenshots, videos, and reviews).

The game will not show on your friends activity feeds.

It will not show friends that you own it when they visit the game's store page, (where it says "n friends already own this game").

It will not show friends that you are currently playing the game when they hover their cursor over your profile picture on your profile page, the friends list, or the group chat page.

I believe this feature would allow players to more freely buy and play games that have some social stigma attached to them.

[Blackjack]

Agreed. Every discussion on this gets locked, unfortunately, so we keep having to make new ones. And always because of trolls who come in here saying "I don't care, why should you?" as though that was some kind of counterargument. This option would hurt no one and would prove helpful for many players(and developers as well!) if they could purchase games as they please without having to worry about other people such as coworkers or family members seeing what they choose to play. My brother, for example, has to have an entire, separate account just so my parents can't see he's playing FPS games like Destiny 2 with me. That's ridiculous to expect everyone to do that or to simply throw away family or work ties just because "I don't care, and neither should you."

[Mailer]

Publicado originalmente por Blackjack:

[...] if they could purchase games as they please without having to worry about other people such as coworkers or family members seeing what they choose to play. My brother, for example, has to have an entire, separate account just so my parents can't see he's playing FPS games like Destiny 2 with me. That's ridiculous to expect everyone to do that or to simply throw away family or work ties just because "I don't care, and neither should you."

It's not so much "I don't care and neither should you" as it is people encouraging that exposed family members fess up and be honest with their peers about what they want to play. (Please keep in mind that you were quoting others so don't assume that I share their statement as well) If you are seriously trying to legitimize a coup like this amongst a family then don't you think that there are also *physical* limitations beyond Steam that one has to worry about to not get caught?

Also, threads can get locked because of discussions developing into insult-fests with less constructive feedback being passed around anymore. The topic itself repeating is not enough unless it strictly violates the guidelines to talk about, although it is encouraged that you use the search feature and add to discussions that exist, what you think has not been said, rather than start anew.

If you are looking for an actual counter argument to be satisfied with then I'll happily start with one that springs to mind:

Data

Some steam users have tons of games in their libraries. Invoking a switch for every single one of those is a lot of data on its own if it has to persist among single users alone. It's an incentive not to implement a system like this, particularly for Valve. How does one get around this?

[Blackjack]

Publicado originalmente por Mailer:

Publicado originalmente por Blackjack:

[...] if they could purchase games as they please without having to worry about other people such as coworkers or family members seeing what they choose to play. My brother, for example, has to have an entire, separate account just so my parents can't see he's playing FPS games like Destiny 2 with me. That's ridiculous to expect everyone to do that or to simply throw away family or work ties just because "I don't care, and neither should you."

It's not so much "I don't care and neither should you" as it is people encouraging that exposed family members fess up and be honest with their peers about what they want to play. If you are seriously trying to legitimize a coup like this amongst a family then don't you think that there are also *physical* limitations beyond Steam that one has to worry about to not get caught?
Also, threads can get locked because of discussions developing into insult-fests with less constructive feedback being passed around anymore. If you are looking for an actual counter argument to be satisfied with then I'll happily start:
Data
Some steam users have tons of games in their libraries. Invoking a switch for every single one of those is a lot of data on its own if it has to persist among single users alone.

Yes and no. Let's assume every user on Steam has a library of 1000 games(Terribly unrealistic, but for the sake of an example). Steam has ~20 million users as of March 2020, so some quick math for that means ~20 billion titles to track. Thankfully, this is an on/off toggle, so they only really need a single bit(or a boolean, for you programmers) to store it. Meaning 20 billion bits of data in total. This sounds like a lot, but this converts down into 2500000 kilobytes, 2500 megabytes, or 2.5 gigabytes. You can get 4gb on a microSD for less than $10 via Amazon.

Now, despite the space not being an issue, there is one point you sort of made on the side. The limit would be the amount of time and effort required to code the setting in. Since we can't see the source code, we can't say for sure, but I'd like to say that shouldn't be too difficult given the minor change it is. Certainly not for a company of Valve's size, I'd imagine.

Hopefully that answers your counterargument sufficiently. It's been ages since I've had a discussion on the internet that involves more than namecalling, so my debate skills may be a little rusty. :P

[Blackjack]

Oh, forgot the coup bit. It's true that Steam may not wish to allow people to hide things from their family, but there's also the issue of people like me who have friends from work. I don't know about you, but I can't terribly say I want to be able to be fired from work for my choice in games due to "not being a worthy representative of the company at all times". 'Tis why I make sure my social media and reddit stay separate from work, but that's harder to do with Steam where I actively play games such as Destiny with coworkers as well, right? Hence the need for a toggle. Thankfully, I don't need to worry about this, but there's plenty of people who do as evidenced by many of the previous threads.

It's not just hurting those players either, as, due to the fact people can get judged and/or fired for their game selection, they are less likely to buy the games they would get in trouble for, and therefore the devs of the game as well as Steam are now making less money than they normally would.

Realistically, it isn't terribly different from the "Should web browsers have an incognito mode" discussion that takes place from time to time.

[ElvisDeadly]

Publicado originalmente por Blackjack:

My brother, for example, has to have an entire, separate account just so my parents can't see he's playing FPS games like Destiny 2 with me. That's ridiculous to expect everyone to do that or to simply throw away family or work ties just because "I don't care, and neither should you."

Should Steam also help buy your brother cigarettes and beer?

How do you think this is an argument for what you want?

[Blackjack]

Publicado originalmente por ElvisDeadly:

Publicado originalmente por Blackjack:

My brother, for example, has to have an entire, separate account just so my parents can't see he's playing FPS games like Destiny 2 with me. That's ridiculous to expect everyone to do that or to simply throw away family or work ties just because "I don't care, and neither should you."

Should Steam also help buy your brother cigarettes and beer?

How do you think this is an argument for what you want?

Rude sarcasm helps no one. Read the other comments before rudely interrupting. As posted before:

It's true that Steam may not wish to allow people to hide things from their family, but there's also the issue of people like me who have friends from work. I don't know about you, but I can't terribly say I want to be able to be fired from work for my choice in games due to "not being a worthy representative of the company at all times". 'Tis why I make sure my social media and reddit stay separate from work, but that's harder to do with Steam where I actively play games such as Destiny with coworkers as well, right? Hence the need for a toggle. Thankfully, I don't need to worry about this, but there's plenty of people who do as evidenced by many of the previous threads.


Making me copy/paste previous posts doesn't prove anything.

[cinedine]

Publicado originalmente por Blackjack:

My brother, for example, has to have an entire, separate account just so my parents can't see he's playing FPS games like Destiny 2 with me. That's ridiculous to expect everyone to do that or to simply throw away family or work ties just because "I don't care, and neither should you."

If your argument is that Steam should make it more difficult to parent, than your argument is nil.
but incidentally your brother is using a perfectly viable solution for this perceived problem: use a second account if you don't want any traces of these games on your precious main account.

... oh and "throw away work ties"?! It's no one's business what I do in my spare time as long as it's not connected to the workplace.

[Blackjack]

"If your argument is that Steam should make it more difficult to parent, than your argument is nil.
but incidentally your brother is using a perfectly viable solution for this perceived problem: use a second account if you don't want any traces of these games on your precious main account."

Many people would rather consolidate everything under a single account for lots of obvious reasons, and it makes this an easy to add feature with no real drawbacks. There's no reason for Steam to NOT add it, to be frank. Just because a workaround exists doesn't mean a feature shouldn't be added.

"... oh and "throw away work ties"?! It's no one's business what I do in my spare time as long as it's not connected to the workplace."

I believe that argument is the same one people have made about things such as Facebook and Twitter posts being cause for termination. However, it still happens, so I believe "your argument is nil". The only option would simply be not playing games with co-workers or, once again, using the aforementioned workaround. I mean, there was literally a story in the news not too long ago about some chick getting fired because she swore while being excited about netting a job at NASA. I would be on your side that it's no one else's business, but in a digital world, this violation of personal rights is becoming a norm. If you don't think you need it, great. But don't deny someone else the tools they need just because you don't need them yourself.

[cinedine]

Publicado originalmente por Blackjack:

But don't deny someone else the tools they need just because you don't need them yourself.

The tool is there. A second account.
If you are so concerned about what people think about your games, you surround yourself with the wrong people.

Not to mention that with this supposed solution you are entirely at the mercy of Valve not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up and people get to know about your dark secrets anyway. Or you somehow giving away yourself, for example by not hiding the game because you got to excited finally playing it. Or your significant other making them public to get back or whatever.

Can't happen with a completely unconnected account.
It's not a workaround. It's the perfect solution.

[Blackjack]

"The tool is there. A second account.
If you are so concerned about what people think about your games, you surround yourself with the wrong people."

Ah yes, there's that "I don't care and neither should you" argument again. Still doesn't help anyone, prove anything, or even contribute to the discussion. Still doesn't provide any sort of meaningful reason as to why they shouldn't add it either.

"Not to mention that with this supposed solution you are entirely at the mercy of Valve not ♥♥♥♥ing up and people get to know about your dark secrets anyway."

Ah yes, the wonderful world of "What ifs". Now what if I told you that any such issue is likely to be very rare and, additionally, would likely not last long enough to matter due to the company hotfixing it ASAP so as to not lose face? This sort of stuff has happened before on other platforms, and rarely stays longer than an hour tops. Certainly not long enough for anyone to notice, and even moreso the issues are very rare.

"Or you somehow giving away yourself, for example by not hiding the game because you got to excited finally playing it."

Ah, I guess there's a lot of features that need removed in case of user error. For example, we should start by removing the play button from games. After all, what if you're in such a hurry to do something that you accidentally press it and launch a game unintentionally? Steam can only give you the tools to help with something, not make it impossible for users to screw up. If they did, we wouldn't have Steam as an option to begin with. No reason to cater to stupid, after all.

"Or your significant other making them public to get back or whatever."

In that case, let's go ahead and shut down Instagram and a bunch of other sites since your significant other could get revenge with stuff on those too. More "what ifs" that really have no bearing here.

"Can't happen with a completely unconnected account.
It's not a workaround. It's the perfect solution."

It's 100% a workaround. According to Steam's own rules, you can't "[c]reate a false identity for the purpose of misleading others"(Steam Online Conduct rules), which is required for having multiple accounts. After all, your goal is to mislead others into thinking you don't have those games and that the account is, in fact, a person wholly separate from you. While Steam has shown they don't care too much in the past about this, that still makes it completely a workaround.

[Traumhaft]

Publicado originalmente por Blackjack:

It's 100% a workaround. According to Steam's own rules, you can't "[c]reate a false identity for the purpose of misleading others"(Steam Online Conduct rules), which is required for having multiple accounts. After all, your goal is to mislead others into thinking you don't have those games and that the account is, in fact, a person wholly separate from you. While Steam has shown they don't care too much in the past about this, that still makes it completely a workaround.

Your interpretation on this is slightly off. The Online Conduct applies to you as a Subscriber, not as a person. Nowhere in the Subscriber Agreement is implied, that you can't create multiple accounts (i.e. 'become multiple Subscribers'). Which is why "[..]they don't care too much[..]".

By that same logic, you are also misleading people by having such a feature. This time, the Online Conduct rule does apply, because your are not two separate Subscribers :D

[Humz]

The Steam tagging system already exists, it can just be a toggle on a tag group to make it private and public. Also I don't think it would be too much data, It doesn't even need to be a bit of data for every game, it could just be stored as an hashset of game ids, which is what I expect the tag system already uses anyway.

There should only be a few places where friends can see what games you own, If Valve is a competent web developer they probably have some sort of function that looks up that data and they can search their codebase to find and change it. If you yourself give yourself away that's your own responsibility, Valve isn't liable for that.

For teenage users, what they are able to do or not do on their computers is up to their parents; if they are not monitoring or managing their relationship with the internet use that's bad parenting, e.g. something Valve is not liable for.

A second account is generally what people use to solve this issue, but a second account doesn't really fit anyone's needs because it is difficult to remember passwords for multiple accounts, and logging out and logging back in is a barrier to gameplay. This feature would remove barriers to gameplay.

[cinedine]

Publicado originalmente por Humz:

There should only be a few places where friends can see what games you own, If Valve is a competent web developer they probably have some sort of function that looks up that data and they can search their codebase to find and change it. If you yourself give yourself away that's your own responsibility, Valve isn't liable for that.

They aren't. There's your first problem.
Also. remember the leakage of personal information in December 2016? That was live for quite some time. There are lot's of other problems that a user wouldn't expect. Set your profile private for example but people can still access UGC like screenshots or reviews by simply attaching /reviews to the URL. Or the various ways you can still see how many games a user owns and how long they played one despite their list being private.
New features always collide with existing ones and cause more problems than you expect from a company that is that long in business.

I didn't talk in hypotheticals earlier. Valve ♥♥♥♥♥ up. Continously.

Publicado originalmente por Humz:

A second account is generally what people use to solve this issue, but a second account doesn't really fit anyone's needs because it is difficult to remember passwords for multiple accounts, and logging out and logging back in is a barrier to gameplay. This feature would remove barriers to gameplay.

Write down your login credentials? Use a password manager? And how often do you plan on switching between these games anyway? If you feel like having a wank every five minutes just download a porn movie. Also there are games on Steam require you to log-in their associated services.

---
At the issue of people's social insecurities.
Take a moment and think about how such a feature would integrate into the whole of Steam.
Screenshots? Can't make them public. Reviews? Nope. Rarest achievement showcase? Needs a severe rework to exclude these games.
But what about the game list itself? If you have hundreds of games it's less of an issue. But if you have five games on it and your list only shows 3, a nosey co-worker (as this seems to be a thing over where some live) will bore into you to find out what games you hid.
What about Chat. Should it show you as in-game or not (obviously rich-presence has to be deactivated as well). In-game? "Hey, why doesn't it show which game you are playing?" Not in-game? "Hey, why don't you answer me?!?!" Oooh, now you have to actively lie to That Guy.

That's just stuff I can quickly come up with. Do you really trust Valve to have to catch each and every issue that can occur with such an implementation? I am on Steam for 10 years or so. I certainly don't.

That's why I say: why surround yourself with people who can harm you for what games you like on a gaming platform? Why work for someone who cares that much about what you do in your sparetime if it doesn't reflect on them or is outright illegal? Or well, let them know about your gaming accounts or social media activities.

Again: a second account does exactly what you want. If that's too much hassle for you, it can't be that important. Oh, and it is available to you now already. So if you have issues, use what you have instead of asking for a niche feature that is lots of hassle to implement rock solid and has little benefit for the company who has to spent resources on it.

[Humz]

Publicado originalmente por cinedine:

They aren't. There's your first problem.
Also. remember the leakage of personal information in December 2016? That was live for quite some time. There are lot's of other problems that a user wouldn't expect. Set your profile private for example but people can still access UGC like screenshots or reviews by simply attaching /reviews to the URL. Or the various ways you can still see how many games a user owns and how long they played one despite their list being private.
New features always collide with existing ones and cause more problems than you expect from a company that is that long in business.

I didn't talk in hypotheticals earlier. Valve ♥♥♥♥♥ up. Continously.

Damn I guess Valve should just pack up and leave because they suck right?

Publicado originalmente por cinedine:

At the issue of people's social insecurities.
Take a moment and think about how such a feature would integrate into the whole of Steam.
Screenshots? Can't make them public. Reviews? Nope. Rarest achievement showcase? Needs a severe rework to exclude these games.
But what about the game list itself? If you have hundreds of games it's less of an issue. But if you have five games on it and your list only shows 3, a nosey co-worker (as this seems to be a thing over where some live) will bore into you to find out what games you hid.
What about Chat. Should it show you as in-game or not (obviously rich-presence has to be deactivated as well). In-game? "Hey, why doesn't it show which game you are playing?" Not in-game? "Hey, why don't you answer me?!?!" Oooh, now you have to actively lie to That Guy.

"Rarest achievement showcase? Needs a severe rework to exclude these games." - It's literally a small logic change to a SQL query.

WRT the nosey coworker you just don't engage with them on the subject because they are invading your personal space. Also what kind of wannabe detective would want to go through all the trouble of finding steam workarounds to see what games somebody is hiding from them. The average person is not so big of a voyeur that they would go through the trouble of doing that

WRT chat it could show you as invisible like the option in the menu that's already implemented.

Publicado originalmente por cinedine:

niche feature that is lots of hassle to implement rock solid and has little benefit for the company who has to spent resources on it.

That's for Valve to decide not you.

[T-TaaN]

+1. I would like to hide SteamVR and fpsVR, becpuse I don't want one steam-VR game to occupy all three "cells" of recent games (the game itself, SteamVR, SteamVR plugins), also, sometimes when I start a SteamVR game, not this game displays in the "playing" block, but the fpsVR (plugin for SteamVR).