Suggestion: Individual Online Status Settings for Specific Friends

[John Doe]

Hello Steam Team,

I recently started a new job, and many of my colleagues use Steam. I would like to play with them, and I've been thinking about adding some of them to my friends list. However, I haven't done so yet because of concerns about my online status.

The issue is that my online status is visible to all my friends, without an option to control who can see it. I’m worried that I might feel watched, especially when I'm playing during vacation or on days off. This concern is amplified because one of the managers is also part of the team. I don’t want it to appear like I’m always gaming, but I also don’t want to be forced to stay on "Invisible" just to interact normally with others.

Therefore, I would love to see Steam introduce a feature that allows users to control who can see their online status on an individual basis, similar to what is possible on platforms like Discord.

At the moment, I haven’t added any colleagues to my friends list yet, as I would prefer to have this feature in place before making those connections.

Are there any plans to implement such a feature? I believe many users would benefit from it.

Best regards,

John Doe

[Holmes]

I don't see why you are concerned that you might game a lot on days off or vacations. If they are all gamers too they won't judge you and how much time you spend playing games is nobody's business. Other than that, I can see how your idea might benefit people who are gaming DURING working hours.

[John Doe]

I see your point, but there can be different reasons why someone might have concerns about this. Whether or not they seem relevant to you doesn’t change the fact that worries and priorities are subjective.

As a father, for example, I can absolutely be criticized for how I spend my free time, and it's not as simple as saying, "We're all gamers anyway." People don’t work like that, and rumors can spread easily. Once they start, they’re hard to counteract—better safe than sorry.

Additionally, sometimes you have friends or colleagues you genuinely like but don’t always want to engage with immediately. A finer level of control would be useful for those days when you just don’t feel like interacting with certain highly communicative people. It’s similar to WhatsApp—those red notification dots put pressure on some people to respond.

What I honestly still wonder: Have you really never encountered colleagues or acquaintances you couldn’t easily avoid because you saw them every day? The kind of people who constantly say, “We should totally hang out sometime, give me your number,” until you either cave in or the situation just gets too awkward? And then, once they’re on WhatsApp, you just put them on mute.

I don’t mean this in a bad way, but are you saying you truly don’t have a single person in your phone—maybe a friend of a friend, someone from work, or even a relative—who you gave your number to out of politeness but never really wanted to spend your free time with?