None - it's all benefits - people have been nagging for these options for ages in the Steam threads. I don't think people (including myself) were really thinking about what that means for SteamSpy for example.
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SteamSpy shutting down due to new privacy settings on Steam
- Thread starter Deleted member 278
- Start date
None - it's all benefits - people have been nagging for these options for ages in the Steam threads. I don't think people (including myself) were really thinking about what that means for SteamSpy for example.
Here's the new options for anyone who hasn't been able to open it currently:
EDIT: Note these are the Default Settings.
EDIT: Note these are the Default Settings.
The average Steam user could set this info to private.
Would you be in favor of facebook, instagram, twitter, automatically setting everything to private as default?
stuff being private by default is generally more secure for the user id say
way easier for some dickhead to target an account that has a ton of games just because its public by default
Got me thinking just now: This can affect GOG Connect program or it uses a different Steam API thingy?
Eh, honestly, not all information for everyone should be public by default. It worked in the early internet to have everything you were doing updated on your webpage/irc poke/whatever, but with the CA weaponization of data scrapes being super public now and the new European Privacy laws, Steam was likely destined to do this either way. Defaulting to all private and consenting to public display makes more sense.
Really? The company that prevented SteamSpy from adding a paywall to data and then later even directly recommending developers utilise SteamSpy to research the market?
Sorry first thing I did when I got my Steam account was set games and other things to private, it's completely ridiculous this stuff would be public by default.
I know other services do this too, doesn't make it right though.
To be fair, if that wasn't the case something like Steam or "digital ownership" which is an oxymoron by itself wouldn't exist. Plus it's not just gamers.
I know other services do this too, doesn't make it right though.
To be fair, if that wasn't the case something like Steam or "digital ownership" which is an oxymoron by itself wouldn't exist. Plus it's not just gamers.
Privacy should be the default for everyone. Before the days of Facebook, it was, anyway. Philosophical stance that one can disagree with, but it's certainly one I agree with. Especially in this era when people may not always understand the data they might be giving away.
If Valve wanted to shut off SteamSpy, they could have screwed around with their webpages to mess up whatever page crawling scripts he uses to get the data. Or they could have sent a C&D.
They wouldn't have needed to go through the effort of making an entire user-facing feature with all the additional development (both for now and for the future), support, and testing just to mess up SteamSpy. They had a lot of easier options.
Ugh. Inventory should be Private by default and comments should be friends only by default.Here's the new options for anyone who hasn't been able to open it currently:
EDIT: Note these are the Default Settings.
Still waiting for the settings page to load for me so I can make some changes.
Edit: just worked for me. Inventory was already set to "Private" which was carried over from my old settings.
Here's the new options for anyone who hasn't been able to open it currently:
EDIT: Note these are the Default Settings.
I don't think that's the default. Game details and Inventory default on Friends Only, while playtime is unchecked and gifts is checked by default for me. Or maybe it depends on each user's privacy settings before this new change.
Here's mine (haven't changed anything):
These aren't really the same things, but I'd be in favor of setting most of FB to private, yes. People usually enjoy twitter and instagram discovery options so maybe no to those, but I know a lot of people who would prefer if they could turn off their likes from either platform being viewable.
Anyway not against the public steam data, just asking what most people who are not developers are losing from this data becoming private.
Yes, that's a good point. Certainly not ideal. It would also be entirely dependant on the defaults and if anyone made changes. I think the default is private, so perhaps it will be less likely for people to switch their game list public
Absolutely - though my priorities are a little different to most other profiles. Generally I have most things public as it's meaningless data. I don't include my specific location / name etc, I hide my inventory etc. There are lots of cases where I have wanted to hide my availability, what game I am in, what is tracked etc. In this sense the additional options are helpful and what folks have asked for
Honestly that's weird, it would make more sense to have the inventory private instead of game details, because the inventory can be by scammers to find people with valuable inventories.Here's the new options for anyone who hasn't been able to open it currently:
EDIT: Note these are the Default Settings.
I don't think they did this on purpose. They have even recommended SteamSpy as a tool for devs to use for research.
Yes.
But also remember that some people may not even realize or understand that Steam is also a quasi social network on top of a gaming platform. Your purchases on iTunes are not public. One would not assume they would be public for Steam too, at least by default.
Yes, you would need to set your library to be public for it to be scraped. I'm pretty sure that was already the case, the change now is privacy is an 'opt out' rule, not an 'opt in'.
Rofl. This shit did more to empower EA than hurt them. I'm not brownnosing multibillion dollar corporations here, I want small devs to be on the same footing as they are re: sales data. And the fact that sales numbers were used to harass small devs going ignored wasn't cool, either.
When a big publisher is using Steamspy to auto-compile competitor and handle dev prepitch with it without letting them present the game in context as with a normal pitch, was giving all the power to the people that already have money and giant market research teams that knew how to suss out the private details embedded in that public data.
OP
OP
...but what "privacy" are you gaining from having the games you own hidden? That's such an asinine thing to care about, which is fine, hide it if that's something you care for. But making this the default made us lose a very nice resource.
I like the new settings, or rather the description if it has always been like that. I can hide game play time, and the current game I'm playing from everyone!Here's the new options for anyone who hasn't been able to open it currently:
EDIT: Note these are the Default Settings.
Also remember people being bugged about valuable items in their inventory, TF2 stuff like the ipod earbuds? This stuff being on default can prevent that. Should consider putting that on friends/private by default.
While it would never be a comprehensive as Steamspy, would it be possible for a similar service to operate via users opting in to it, or even doing manual surveys much in the way that a traditional polling company might do?
With the right methods, even a small sample size of just a few thousand people can give you relatively accurate results - most political pollsters use sample sizes of only about a 1000 people for each poll.
With the right methods, even a small sample size of just a few thousand people can give you relatively accurate results - most political pollsters use sample sizes of only about a 1000 people for each poll.
seriously... with the recent facebook drama about our informations and privacy you'd except people to try and be more wary about this kind of stuff but it doesn't seem like it matters for most people at all
Yeah, soon as I posted I guessed the same thing. Not that much of change tbh.
We'll see how things will go when the next batch arrives.
Quoting myself from earlier in the thread:
I can think of a number of other examples. Mostly school related, like some bullies harassing another kid because they see he plays anime games. A Christian making a big to-do over someone playing DOOM. Who knows.
But data inevitably gets abused. And as games go from "just Mario" to actual expressions of self, well, you see what I mean?
Yeah, that's how mine looked (the page loaded right after I hit post, lol) with the exception of Library that was already set to private (carried over from my old settings).
Here are my settings after I made some changes. It's about where I think the defaults should be:
Inventory privacy has been available for a very long time, possibly since launch of inventory, can't remember. I don't think I've messed with my settings and it is automatically private.
I think a similar thing was true with the over all visibility. I remember specify changing my visibility to public so I could utilise other websites like humble and GOG connect, but have always had inventory private since that is always called out as the way you'll end up with stupid friend requests and begging. Also hidden public commenting.
Also yeah, amusing to think Valve are arogant here after allowing and supporting the existence of such a service for so long
Yeah usually I'm all in favor of the side of privacy, but when it comes to something as meaningless as my collection of digital videogames, I don't see the point of caring. Facebook is privy to a lot more sensitive data than Steam is, so comparing them on anything less than a purely philosophical level seems arbitrary.
Yeah I care about my personal information getting out there. What games I have doesn't mean jack to me.
Imagine if you all's Amazon purchases were public. Imagine all of the small companies you could help by making everyone's total buy info on Amazon visible. It would be so nice to find someone's amazon profile to see all of their posts on the amazon comments, what they watch on prime, who they sub to on twitch, what amazon products they view, their reviews, and the stuff they ordered on Sunday that should be showing up on their doorstep within a week. All visible by default. /not serious
Yeah, I think of lot of it has to do with people discounting how much can be inferred just by their entertainment choices.
This quote is regarding facebook likes but the concept is similar: With just a few data points you can start building a fairly accurate profile of a user.
http://wgno.com/2018/04/10/how-facebook-likes-predict-race-religion-and-sexual-orientation/
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hardcastlemccormick hits on a good point about not-in-the-know consumers' default expectation of privacy:
Username -> profile -> edit profile -> my privacy settings
Occams Razor says it obviously isn't.
No, but in the advent of the GDPR is classed as sensitive personal data.
Not everyone is aware of one of the bigger tech news stories from today which is, coincidentally, directly related to social media platforms handling of user information:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...acd97698cef_story.html?utm_term=.a598052b2348
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...nd-a-smile-to-try-to-seduce-assuage-senators/
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...-before-sharing-your-data-under-proposed-law/
Yep. I did not think about this when asking for it!
Legally, I don't think Valve can provide specific per application data without consent from the dev / pub in question, with the exception of concurrent user data which is public once a game is released.
SteamSpy scraped public data and statistical analysis to estimate owner data. As a third party service not infringing on any agreements, it was fine to exist ( with the exception of when Sergey attempted to monetize this data and Valve stepped in to stop that)
How do we reach this conclusion considering all of Valve's past usage and recommendations of SteamSpy, support of its existence for so many years, and that the current changes are highly requested by users and syncing up with the changes for the Steam refresh + client update?
I don't buy it, unless something extremely significant has happened. In the end Valve / Steam have massively benefited from SteamSpy's availability. The fact Valve themselves recommended it at Dev Days throughout is some testament to this
About time! This data never should have been left open in the first place. Also coming up on Steam is Invisible mode, for when you don't want your friends to know you're online playing Space Waifu. I honestly have no idea why it took so long for Valve to do this.
Gaming is one of the most expensive forms of entertainment out there today. Its only at the benefit of the industry to let gamers know how healthy or unhealthy everything is.
In the all digital future..all we are gonna have is shitty corporate PR masking bullshit #s with bullshit words. Its pretty much already how it is now. Being in the dark is gonna suck.