While Valve has the most intricate service when it comes to digital game stores, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Its interface hasn’t aged particularly gracefully, and it lacks some features that one would desire. The lack of solid alternatives makes it the reigning queen, but also the fact that, from time to time, they dare to introduce some features that users have been demanding for years. Like the ability to hide games from our friends’ lists, for example.
This new functionality was first discovered and shared by Pavel Djundik, the creator of SteamDB. According to Djundik, this new privacy option goes beyond the current privacy settings, which allow you to hide achievements and screenshots, by letting you mark certain games as private so that no one can see them.
Although it might seem like a niche feature, there has been widespread approval of this functionality on social media. There are many reasons to hide games, from wanting to maintain privacy for personal reasons to not wanting to expose our preferences for certain motives. This has played in favor of a very positive reception from the community. The reception, as expected, has not been without some humor along the way.
On the comedic side, there have been essentially two camps. On one hand, there are people who consider those who hide their games as cowards unwilling to expose their tastes, no matter how bad they might be. On the other hand, there are people who think that this will be a boom for the kind of games that most people don’t want others to know they’ve been playing.
Whether, joking aside, this will lead to a surge in bad, erotic, or perceived-as-childish games is something we’ll find out if the news is confirmed. But even if it doesn’t turn out to be true, judging by the public’s reaction, Steam would do well to introduce this functionality.
