Steam privacy update spells disaster for Steam Spy

A change to Steam’s privacy settings has delivered the death blow to analytics service Steam Spy. 

Today, Valve has rolled out a change to Steam’s Profile Privacy Settings Page which sees an extensive rework to the way the system’s privacy settings work. 

One change that wasn’t flagged up was that Steam has made everyone’s gaming library hidden by default, a setting that Steam Spy developer Sergey Galyonkin relied on to get analytics data. 

Valve just made a change to their privacy settings, making games owned by Steam users hidden by default.

Steam Spy relied on this information being visible by default and won't be able to operate anymore.https://t.co/0ejZgRQ6Kd

— Steam Spy (@Steam_Spy) April 11, 2018

To reiterate – it's not because of the new privacy settings. It's because Steam just made everyone's gaming library hidden by default (this wasn't in their blog post).

— Steam Spy (@Steam_Spy) April 11, 2018

This was a quiet change, but a worthwhile one in terms of privacy settings. However, if it signals the end of one of the more useful pieces of analytical data we have to look at Valve, it’s a blow to our understanding of a fairly opaque part of the video game marketplace. 

While Steam Spy wasn’t 100% accurate, it was a quick and easy way for anyone to look and see how well a game was doing. It also positioned Galyonkin as a useful analyst with regards to Steam, and saw him giving talks at GDC each year to talk about the market in general. 

Whether Valve and Galyonkin can come together to work out an arrangement to keep the service running remains to be seen, but for now at least it seems Steam Spy is facing a bleak future.