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Comment by barrkel | Hacker News Reader

I'm uncomfortable sharing the amount of time I have games running with Steam; I certainly don't want MS to have information about which applications I'm running and for how long.

MS and I have radically different expectations about what privacy means in the context of a personal computer.

In particular, I run applications I've written myself. You could easily figure out what I'm doing from knowing which application was in the foreground at any given time.

Contents of files etc. is at the extreme end of privacy violation. I strongly object to the thinnest end of the wedge.

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Thank you for bringing up the invasive and crazy anti-privacy policies of Valve/Steam, it boggles my mind that so few people have problems with it.

Could you imagine if Facebook pushed a notification to all your friends when you visit a new page?

If Microsoft sent an email to your entire contact book every single time you opened a program?

And yet, that's precisely what Steam does. Insane.

It's particularly uncomfortable now that Steam has some... risqué game titles out there. I'm surprised there isn't at least more options on Steam to mark certain titles as private.

You can set your profile private and then play in offline mode, which should prevent people from viewing your profile and seeing what your playtimes are. I'm not sure if playing in offline mode stops Valve from logging / viewing this data, however. I'd be surprised it it does.

In terms of playtime I think offline mode does stop it being logged. My wifi was stuffed in my game box and about 20 hours of a game weren't logged by the time I got a new adapter and reconnected to Steam servers.

PS4 does this as well. Not sure if this sharing can be turned off (I still see the messages) even with all the privacy settings turned on.

The PS3 did this as well, so it's clearly a policy they haven't seen enough backlash from to reverse.

It's the 'Hidden Games' section in privacy settings.

Hmm. For the most part I only play games in a social setting - local multiplayer or online - so it may be different for me. When I join an IRC channel, every other user sees "wallacoloo has joined" and I've never heard anyone complain about that. It's an open invitation, "hey, I'm here now - message me!" Similarly for Steam, the notification serves the purpose of saying "hey friends, I'm playing Rocket League now if you want to join".

Isn't the whole point of friending people on Steam so that they can play games with you? In that case, this behavior seems pretty intuitive to me. Though from that angle, broadcasting this announcement for single-player/non-networked games doesn't really achieve anything and should maybe not be the default.

I think it's amusing to put non-games and other silly things in Steam and broadcast the fact that I'm now playing Notepad or Solitaire.

"When I join an IRC channel, every other user sees "wallacoloo has joined" and I've never heard anyone complain about that."

I'm okay with Steam saying "Soandso has logged on" but not "Soandso has moved their mouse 400 pixels, double left clicked, and is starting new software... stay tuned!"

"Isn't the whole point of friending people on Steam so that they can play games with you?"

The whole point of steam is a distribution platform. It has a defacto monopoly on computer gaming with some 3/4 of the entire market through the platform.

Sure, I play the occasional multiplayer game, but the other 80% of my behavior doesn't need to be publically broadcast against my will at all times.

It's ridiculous: I have to click "appear offline" then log into the Steam Chat website just to play a game and not have my steam account announce that to everyone I know. Sometimes you just don't want to push notify everyone you know about your every behavior.

Also -- why be friends on steam? "Dude you didn't friend me yet" "Dude i sent u my info a week ago" "Dude i thought you said you wanted to friend me" "Dude" "dude"

You have to friend people or they get offended. Social networks and psychology man. I just don't want a f'n social network in my video game launcher. Crazy. Not every single computer endpoint has to be a social network.

Yeah, I've always been slightly uncomfortable with the level of tracking in Steam as well. Mostly the notifications to friends when I start and stop playing a game, but the total hours count as well.

I guess I take partial solace in the fact that my number of hours played is almost always wildly inaccurate because I have a habit of (sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally) letting my PC sit idle for long stretches of time with a game still running. Steam doesn't track for activity within the game, just that it's open.

You can set yourself offline if you don't want your friends getting notifications when you play something.

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