Allow setting to hide currently playing game on steam

[Jippen Faddoul]

Right now, if you want to be connected to steam friend or community chatrooms, you MUST share the currently running game with everyone you share a room or friend with. However, there are many times where I may wish to NOT share this information, but still want to be able to communicate with people on the platform.

Examples:
* Playing a game in a closed Alpha/Beta test with an NDA
* Playing a game with multiplayer features, but only wanting to play solo for the evening
* Playing adult content games without advertising to every coworker and minor on the platform (Ideally this would be a separate toggle)

There are numerous, reasonable situations for a person to not want to share what game they're playing without having to sacrifice the entire chat feature of steam. This is a small client-side change to implement, however it can have a significant impact on social relations by allowing users to have more control over what they share, and when they share it.

[AmsterdamHeavy]

Steam Profile / Privacy / Make Game Details Private

That will do what you want, Friends wont show you in any game but will show you as online.

[Tanoomba]

Originally posted by AmsterdamHeavy:

Steam Profile / Privacy / Make Game Details Private

That will do what you want, Friends wont show you in any game but will show you as online.

Was this a recent addition?

[wuddih]

Originally posted by Tanoomba:

Originally posted by AmsterdamHeavy:

Steam Profile / Privacy / Make Game Details Private

That will do what you want, Friends wont show you in any game but will show you as online.

Was this a recent addition?

dunno if you call 2018 recent.

[Jippen Faddoul]

Originally posted by AmsterdamHeavy:

Steam Profile / Privacy / Make Game Details Private

That will do what you want, Friends wont show you in any game but will show you as online.

It doesn't though, as thats a super, super coarse setting.

For an example, I achievement hunt in games. I enjoy using community sites like steamhunters and exophase to compare my progress with others and engage in friendly competition. Doing this requires sharing what I have played previously - which I'm fine with. If someone wants to try to cyberstalk that page and refresh it to try to figure out what I'm playing right now - thats not the problem I'm trying to solve for.

So my choices currently are:
* Stop using the steam friends feature entirely, and hope it doesn't auto log me in, especially when I switch devices.
* Be vigilant about manually controlling my online/offline/invisible settings, which is error-prone
* Sacrifice asynchronous community engagement to protect real time privacy
* Do nothing, deal with the impact of this data being shared.

As you can see, the setting mentioned is *almost* what I want, but I want to be able to apply it independently to the realtime "You're playing X *right now*" and the non-realtime "You got an achievement in halo yesterday". The functionality is almost there, but not quite.

[Johnny Stokino]

More privacy options are always good. They can keep the default working as it is now, so people who want to let it all hang out have nothing to worry about.

[AmsterdamHeavy]

Originally posted by Jippen Faddoul:

Originally posted by AmsterdamHeavy:

Steam Profile / Privacy / Make Game Details Private

That will do what you want, Friends wont show you in any game but will show you as online.

It doesn't though, as thats a super, super coarse setting.

For an example, I achievement hunt in games. I enjoy using community sites like steamhunters and exophase to compare my progress with others and engage in friendly competition. Doing this requires sharing what I have played previously - which I'm fine with. If someone wants to try to cyberstalk that page and refresh it to try to figure out what I'm playing right now - thats not the problem I'm trying to solve for.

So my choices currently are:
* Stop using the steam friends feature entirely, and hope it doesn't auto log me in, especially when I switch devices.
* Be vigilant about manually controlling my online/offline/invisible settings, which is error-prone
* Sacrifice asynchronous community engagement to protect real time privacy
* Do nothing, deal with the impact of this data being shared.

As you can see, the setting mentioned is *almost* what I want, but I want to be able to apply it independently to the realtime "You're playing X *right now*" and the non-realtime "You got an achievement in halo yesterday". The functionality is almost there, but not quite.

Youve moved the goalpost. You made no mention of also hiding achievements in the OP. You just wanted a way for people to not see what you were playing while still being online.

So, YES that did meet the requirement you stated in the original post. NOW, after you added a requirement its "almost".

[Crashed]

Aren't closed betas usually hidden from your status anyway?