Bless me, Gaben, for I have sinned. In a moment of weakness I turned off the adult content filters in my Steam search, and now my game library has been tainted by the shame of tender, undulating flesh rendered in Unreal Engine. But fear not, fellow naughty gamers: Steam will soon let you hide those titles you’d rather not let your friends and family see if they happen to stray near your battlestation… assuming you’re not actively playing them at the time, of course.
Update, March 5th, 2024: The hide-your-shame feature is now officially out of beta, and you can use it in the release version of Steam. The original story continues below.
Steam’s more laissez-faire attitude towards explicitly sexual content in its gigantic and ever-growing digital storefront does present some issues for those who’d like to share their libraries with others in their household, or just show what they’ve been playing on their profile. In the latest beta build you can mark any and all games as “private” on your account, hiding them from public and friends lists for both your game library, your in-game status, activities like achievements, and your playtime (give it a rest, geez!). This is a pretty huge improvement over Steam’s previous all-or-nothing approach to player privacy, though you did have the option to hide individual games in your library page.
The latest beta update is supposed to be rolling out today, according to both Steam’s support page and The Verge, but I’m not seeing it yet. Once it lands you should be able to hide public-facing game info by going to the “Manage” submenu for any individual game in your library. You can even select a purchase as “private” as soon as you’ve made it on the store. Other changes include a synced shopping cart across all Steam clients, web, desktop, and mobile. Now, to atone for your sin, give me three Hail Memorys and five Our Framerates.
