Hiding your activity from friends

[Warp]

Perhaps one of the most-requested changes to Steam is the option to hide your purchases and activity from everybody, including your friends. Yet there is no option for this.

I understand perfectly why Steam announces your purchases to friends: It increases sales. It entices people to try and buy games their friends play. It's a good business model. I understand this.

However, this is a question of privacy. User choice of privacy should always trump advertisement tactics. Bypassing your customer's privacy in order to increase sales is not acceptable.

And no, the answer to not wanting your friends to see that you are playing eg. some naughty dating sim is not "get better friends" or "unfriend them". I shouldn't have to remove anybody from my friend list simply because I don't want to announce to the world what kind of games I'm playing. If I'm embarrassed to play some pervy game, that ought to be a private matter of mine; Steam should not be in the position of advertising it to all my friends. I don't even understand why this is a question.

Even worse, Steam does not make clear what exactly it's showing to your friends. When you buy or start a game, you have no idea what exactly your friends are seeing. Steam does not inform you in any way of this. It all happens behind the scenes without you knowing.

And even worse, the privacy settings of your profile do not stop Steam from announcing your purchases to your friends, or the fact that you are playing a certain game. Even setting your profile to fully private will still allow people in your friends list to know these things; this has been tested.

This is outright misleading. Nowhere does the Steam privacy page tell you about this.

The thing is, Steam is probably selling less of those certain games because of this very reason. Many people are too embarrassed to buy them because Steam breaches their privacy by annoucing their dirty little secrets to all their friends. You can laugh all you like, but that's not cool.


Edit: Nowhere in the Steam Subscriber Agreement, or the Privacy Policy Agreement, is this mentioned. Not even in passing or indirectly, and most certainly not explicitly. This means that as a Steam user, you never agreed to this, not even inadvertently. Which in turn means that if you agree that this is something that Steam should not be doing, you have a legitimate privacy complaint.

If you agree that this is something that Steam should not be doing, you can write a formal complaint to Valve. Go to http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/ and at the very end of the page there is a "Privacy Feedback" link that will take you to a form that you can use to send a message to Valve.

Please be formal, civil and polite. Make a formal complaint about Steam divulging your personal purchases and other game activities to third-parties in a manner that identifies you as the purchaser, without your consent or knowledge, and that you never agreed to that, because it's not mentioned in the Subscriber Agreement. Express that you do not consent for this private information to be divulged to other people, even if they are in your Steam friends list, and that you shouldn't have to purge your friends list to keep this information private.

Hopefully, if enough people send complaints to Valve, they will do something about it.


Edit 2: Here is a suggestion I have to solve these problems:

Allow games to be bought in "incognito mode". This may be, for example, a tickbox you could select when you buy a game. If it has been selected, then absolutely nothing of you purchasing, owning or playing that game will be broadcast to anybody in your friends list (or any other third party). They wouldn't see anything about you owning the game (even if they own it themselves.) From their perspective it would be exactly as if you hadn't bought nor owned the game at all.

This may be something that could be enabled or disabled by the game publisher, when submitting it to Steam. If the publisher does not wish to allow people to buy their game incognito, they could choose to do so. But some publishers may well want to allow people to buy their game incognito (especially publishers of certain game genres). The option to buy incognito could be presented to the end user when purchasing the game, if the publisher has chosen to allow it.

Also, what is and is not broadcast to people in your friends list should be made explicit, unambiguous and visible, with a concrete list of such things (rather than vague generic statements). At the very least this should be in the Privacy Policy Agreement, but also preferably somewhere even more visible.

[Zeron]

no_pressure_now の投稿を引用：

I cam think of three solutions:
1. Ignore them.
2. Make an alternate account.
3. Don't play these "pervy" games.

And none of those three solutions are viable.

Especially since the third one doesn't even apply to most people here but just like the other guys who suggested the same crap, you have no idea of why we are complaining.

[Warp]

Zeron の投稿を引用：

However, saying "f*ck you Valve" will only make things worse, they won't take you seriously if you keep doing that. I think you should edit those parts as soon as you can.

It has become quite clear that nobody at Valve is reading any of this, so it probably doesn't make any difference. (But I suppose that some forum moderator is probably reading every message because it's his job, so I suppose that if I vent my frustration too much, I risk getting banned or, even in the best case scenario, this thread being locked.)

[Warp]

Llefty の投稿を引用：

Definitely post this on Reddit. It'll get a lot more exposure there, and there is a more likely chance a Valve employee will see it if it gets big.

Maybe I could try that, but I have my doubts it will lead to anything. Maybe a half dozen people will just respond with the old tired defenses of "get better friends", "create a new account" and so on.

I actually got a taste of exactly this, as one of the YouTubers I tried to contact was TotalBiscuit, through his subreddit. He didn't respond at all (which I don't find very surprising), but two other people did, and both of them just threw those tired "get better friends" style defenses. Zero interest in the topic.

If you are curious of what my original message was, it was this:

Warp の投稿を引用：

I was wondering if you could be interested in this topic.

I think Valve engages in some dubious practices with respect to their users' privacy on Steam. Moreover, their privacy policy agreement is misleading in this regard (perhaps even to the point of being borderline illegal in some jurisdictions.)

If you add somebody to your Steam friends list, they will see your entire game library. Every single game you have ever bought, including games you might not want others to know you have (like some naughty VNs), they will see. And this regardless of your privacy settings (even setting your profile to private will not stop them from seeing your games list). Family, friends, acquaintances, playgroups... if you add any of them to your Steam friends list, they will have access to seeing your entire library of games. Even those you would not want them to see. And if you have ever bought any such game in the past, it will be there forever, without any possibility of hiding it. This has potential to cause embarrassment and difficult questions from family and friends. (Likewise purging them from your friends list could cause uncomfortable questions about why.) It is arguably a matter of privacy, and a breach of it.

This is doubly problematic in that Steam does not inform you in any way, shape or form that this will happen, when you add people to your friends list, or buy games. It all happens behind the scenes, surreptitiously. When you buy a game, when you start playing a game, when you get achievements or trading cards in a game... Steam may share all of this information with everybody in your friends list, without informing you, and without asking you for permission. It's very difficult to even know what information will be shared, because Steam doesn't tell you.

Even more importantly, this fact is not mentioned either in the Steam Subscriber Agreement nor in the Privacy Policy Agreement. By accepting these documents, you never agreed to this information being shared. On the contrary, the Privacy Policy Agreement gives the impression that this is something that is explicitly not done. It says:

"Valve will not share any personally identifiable information with other parties except as described in this policy. Valve also processes anonymous data, aggregated or not, in order to analyze and produce statistics related to the habits, usage patterns, and demographics of users as a group or as individuals. Such anonymous data does not allow the identification of the users to which it relates. Valve may share anonymous data, aggregated or not, with third parties."

Whether this is contradictory with the above, and in breach of the agreement, might not be legally clear. However, the fact remains that the agreement gives the impression that Valve will not share your private information with third-parties in a manner that allows them to identify who that information belongs to. But Steam does this, with your purchases list, and without informing you or asking your permission to do so. Therefore it can be argued that the privacy policy agreement is at the very least misleading.

Threads about this subject exist in the Steam forum. They are completely ignored by Valve. Formal complaints sent to them using the Privacy Feedback form are likewise completely ignored, with not even a response.

[Warp]

I made this post on Steam's reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/4qy9vr/steam_user_privacy_issues_potentially_even_illegal/

[Start_Running]

Zeron の投稿を引用：

no_pressure_now の投稿を引用：

I cam think of three solutions:
1. Ignore them.
2. Make an alternate account.
3. Don't play these "pervy" games.

And none of those three solutions are viable.

Especially since the third one doesn't even apply to most people here but just like the other guys who suggested the same crap, you have no idea of why we are complaining.

I suspect you are complaining because complaining about Steam is currently the 'in-thing' to do.

[Rawex]

no_pressure_now の投稿を引用：

I cam think of three solutions:
1. Ignore them.
2. Make an alternate account.
3. Don't play these "pervy" games.

Grow up...

[Zeron]

Start_Running の投稿を引用：

Zeron の投稿を引用：

And none of those three solutions are viable.

Especially since the third one doesn't even apply to most people here but just like the other guys who suggested the same crap, you have no idea of why we are complaining.

I suspect you are complaining because complaining about Steam is currently the 'in-thing' to do.

Complaining about people complaining is idiotic, I really don't know what you have to gain here.

At least we are here to fight for a cause, you're just here to fight for nonsense. Let that sink in, you are doing NOTHING productive here, when you got nothing to gain from a discussion then you are more than likely a troll who doesn't deserve to have internet connection.

[Start_Running]

Zeron の投稿を引用：

Start_Running の投稿を引用：

I suspect you are complaining because complaining about Steam is currently the 'in-thing' to do.

Complaining about people complaining is idiotic, I really don't know what you have to gain here.

That was not a compalint... that was an observation. I long ago said, in this very thread perhaps, that the reasoning for such things makes surprising sense if you replace 'friends' with 'parents'.

At least we are here to fight for a cause, you're just here to fight for nonsense.

WHo's here to fight. I just made an observation. But that you have to resort to the 'them versus us politicizing so quickly shows just how flimsy this pretext of a cause of yours is.

Let that sink in, you are doing NOTHING productive here, when you got nothing to gain from a discussion then you are more than likely a troll who doesn't deserve to have internet connection.

Oh, I think showing up bad ideas for the stupidity they are is quite productive.


As said. If this sort of thing is the biggest issue or cause you can find to fight for... you need to get out more. Maybe spend less time playing video games. That would solve two problems.

[Zeron]

Start_Running の投稿を引用：

Zeron の投稿を引用：

Complaining about people complaining is idiotic, I really don't know what you have to gain here.

That was not a compalint... that was an observation. I long ago said, in this very thread perhaps, that the reasoning for such things makes surprising sense if you replace 'friends' with 'parents'.

At least we are here to fight for a cause, you're just here to fight for nonsense.

WHo's here to fight. I just made an observation. But that you have to resort to the 'them versus us politicizing so quickly shows just how flimsy this pretext of a cause of yours is.

Let that sink in, you are doing NOTHING productive here, when you got nothing to gain from a discussion then you are more than likely a troll who doesn't deserve to have internet connection.

Oh, I think showing up bad ideas for the stupidity they are is quite productive.


As said. If this sort of thing is the biggest issue or cause you can find to fight for... you need to get out more. Maybe spend less time playing video games. That would solve two problems.

You're tiresome, you haven't changed at all, you keep trolling and acting like you're always right despite the fact that everything you say makes no sense and you keep saying crap that doesn't justify your actions. Keep calling it "observations" or whatever you want, to me you're just trying to derrail the thread once again after all this time. You're still trying way too hard to prove that this feature isn't needed.

Once again, I will stop replying to you, you're stubburn and you make no sense, i'm totally done with you. And one more thing, this feature IS NEEDED, so stop being so pushy about something that's optional and won't harm you in any way, stop being a selfish little bratt and unsubscribe to this discussion.

[Warp]

Well, as I guessed, posting on reddit was a complete waste of time. It's nothing more than people defending Valve (and refusing to explain why they are doing so).

This is a fight that cannot be won. Valve will keep just giving us the middle finger, trampling over our privacy, and we are not going to get more privacy options, and people will just jump to defend them, for inexplicable reasons. Valve is untouchable.

[Start_Running]

Warp の投稿を引用：

Well, as I guessed, posting on reddit was a complete waste of time. It's nothing more than people defending Valve (and refusing to explain why they are doing so).

This is a fight that cannot be won. Valve will keep just giving us the middle finger, trampling over our privacy, and we are not going to get more privacy options, and people will just jump to defend them, for inexplicable reasons. Valve is untouchable.

Who takes reddit seriously anyway?
Me thinks this is a simple case of other people having more understanding of the matter than yourself.

[elviscera]

I think the ability to choose what you share is a completely reasonable, I would definitely like to be able to chose whether to display the games I play and my play hours in them. Creating a second account (to mark private) will require rebuying games that I already "own".

[Rawex]

Start_Running の投稿を引用：

Warp の投稿を引用：

Well, as I guessed, posting on reddit was a complete waste of time. It's nothing more than people defending Valve (and refusing to explain why they are doing so).

This is a fight that cannot be won. Valve will keep just giving us the middle finger, trampling over our privacy, and we are not going to get more privacy options, and people will just jump to defend them, for inexplicable reasons. Valve is untouchable.

Who takes reddit seriously anyway?
Me thinks this is a simple case of other people having more understanding of the matter than yourself.

Lol which has been seen on 90% of the responses Warp got. .. .. ...?

[Start_Running]

Rawex の投稿を引用：

Start_Running の投稿を引用：

Who takes reddit seriously anyway?
Me thinks this is a simple case of other people having more understanding of the matter than yourself.

Lol which has been seen on 90% of the responses Warp got. .. .. ...?

what sort of responmse did he actually get... I don't reddit.

[Rawex]

Start_Running の投稿を引用：

Rawex の投稿を引用：

Lol which has been seen on 90% of the responses Warp got. .. .. ...?

what sort of responmse did he actually get... I don't reddit.

Was just talking in total general both steam and reddit. ^^ i guess people just only care about what they are given and not what they can ask for. I mean i can't see how its an issue to anyone, but it seems like a big problem to most people who read this thread with the biggest reason of why not just delete all your friends or make a new account and rebuy all your games.

I cant see any benefit in this, both in time and money spent to do it.