A feature that more than a few have been requesting over the years; allowing you to hide what you are playing from your friends
Over the years, Steam has become the most popular store for PC gamers thanks to Valve’s constant updates to the service’s feature set. That, and all the sales.
Speaking of launches, today it was revealed that the team is working on a new feature, which at first glance seems relatively basic but actually has a lot of utility. There’s no word yet on when it will be available, but you’ll soon be able to mark a game as private, thus hiding it even from your friends.
This news comes from Pavel Djundik on Twitter, although readers will probably know him better as the creator of SteamDB. The service monitors Steam’s backend, often revealing details about upcoming games, current player count, and more.
In the tweet, you can see a screenshot of the upcoming “Mark as private” feature, confirming that the feature will launch soon.
Again, there’s no specific release date yet, but it could be coming soon.
In the comments section, it’s clear that most players initially thought the feature would be used to hide certain adult games on Steam. This would certainly be one of the use cases, but there are other reasons why someone might use it.
This includes hiding a game from friends that you don’t want them to invite you to play. Suppose you have a friend who plays a lot of DOTA 2 and always invites you to join them, but you always say no. One day you might decide to go see it, but you don’t want your friends to bother you if you don’t like them.
Being able to mark it as private allows you to do this without any pressure. Previously, you could use the “Appear offline” option, but your friends could still see DOTA 2 in your games list.
Obviously, the first use case will probably be the one where the majority of gamers use it, but it’s more than just a way to hide adult games from your friends and family. Hopefully, Valve will soon announce exactly when players can expect this update.
Since this has been revealed, it seems reasonable to expect that we will know more by the end of the year.