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Yesterday, the official Steam Blog announced some very important privacy policy changes for Steam and, more specifically, privacy changes for user profiles.Today’s update expands on your Profile Privacy Settings Page, giving you more control over the privacy of your Steam account. With more detailed descriptions of what profile information is included in each category, you will be able to manage how you are viewed by your friends, or the wider Steam Community.
You can now select who can view your profile’s “game details”; which includes the list of games you have purchased or wishlisted, along with achievements and playtime. This setting also controls whether you’re seen as “in-game” and the title of the game you are playing.
Additionally, regardless of which setting you choose for your profile’s game details, you now have the option to keep your total game playtime private. You no longer need to nervously laugh it off as a bug when your friends notice the 4,000+ hours you've put into Ricochet.
You can now select who can view your profile’s “game details”; which includes the list of games you have purchased or wishlisted, along with achievements and playtime. This setting also controls whether you’re seen as “in-game” and the title of the game you are playing.
Additionally, regardless of which setting you choose for your profile’s game details, you now have the option to keep your total game playtime private. You no longer need to nervously laugh it off as a bug when your friends notice the 4,000+ hours you've put into Ricochet.
As it stands right now, the default privacy settings for everyone's user accounts is set to "Friends Only" or even "Private." Oddly, Valve says that this is being done due to user feedback. Though the timing is suspect with the recent passing of new European privacy laws (GDPR).
However, as a result of these necessary changes, tools that once made use of the publicly available information will no longer be able to function with any degree of reliability. This includes tools and sites such as Steam Spy and probably also Steam Charts, at least some parts of Steam Charts.
Steam Spy made an announcement on Twitter about their future plans. Right now the plan is to leave the site up as an archive.
