Steam Spy announces it’s shutting down, blames Valve’s new privacy settings
In light of Internet and social-media privacy landing at the top of major news outlets this week, another major online service announced its own privacy-policy updates on Tuesday. The latest change comes from Steam, the Western world's largest online PC game seller. According to Steam's creators at Valve, an updated settings panel will soon let gamers more clearly decide how their use of the service is communicated to approved friends and the public at large.
Within hours of this announcement, one company confirmed the policy change's collateral damage. Steam Spy, the world's most comprehensive game ownership and play estimator available to the public, announced that it "won't be able to operate anymore" thanks to Valve's official policy change.
"Valve just made a change to their privacy settings, making games owned by Steam users hidden by default," the site's operators announced on its official Twitter account. "Steam Spy relied on this information being visible by default." In answering questions from fans, Steam Spy creator Sergey Galyonkin suggested that the site will only remain as an "archive" from here on out.
