Steam Adds New Option to Hide NSFW Games

Steam is the biggest PC storefront on the market, but that doesn’t mean the team at Valve isn’t constantly looking for ways to improve the service. Regularly, Steam gets small, impactful changes that add and update features that players use each day. It’s partially that commitment to constantly improving the user experience that makes Steam such a market leader. That, and all of the massive sales. Today, Valve dropped yet another update to the Steam store, giving players several brand-new options centered around their shopping carts. The biggest addition is the ability to mark a game as private before you even buy it.

Previously, players had the option to hide a game from their Steam profile and games list after they’d purchased it, but that meant others could still see that they had bought the game, if only for a limited time. Now, you can mark the game as private when it first enters your cart, ensuring that your ownership will always be hidden from other users. On top of that change, Steam has also updated the cart so that anything you add to it on one device will be there if you change to another one. Plus, Valve has updated how gift purchases for friends work to let you make several purchases for multiple friends all at once.

It’s worth noting that all of this is technically still in the beta version. You won’t be able to access all of these features in the normal Steam client just yet, but if you opt into the Steam Client Beta, you can test them out before they’re ready for primetime. Below, you’ll find the full patch notes for the shopping cart update.

Steam Shopping Cart Update Patch Notes

Starting today, users who have opted into the Steam Client Beta will see a new version of the shopping cart when checking out on the Steam Store. These users will also be able to mark games in their library as private.

Shopping Cart Updates

The Steam Store’s updated shopping cart includes some handy new features:

• Inline gifting – just in time for the holidays, you can now purchase gifts for multiple friends (and yourself) without having to make multiple purchases. Plus gift messaging has been simplified to speed up the checkout process.
  
• One cart across all devices – items in your shopping cart will now follow you across all devices where you’re signed in to Steam. Note that during the beta, the cart will only be accessible within the beta client.
  
• Private purchasing – keeping your games private starts before you even make a purchase, so the new cart lets you mark a game as private before you check out.
  

Private Games

Steam has long supported multiple levels of privacy for your Steam profile and your entire games list. However, there are times when you might want to keep a few of the games you own off those lists.

Starting today you’ll be able to mark specific games as private and they’ll disappear from anywhere they’d be viewed by someone other than you. That includes: your ownership, in-game status, playtime, and activity in that game. This additional control allows you to keep most of your Steam Library visible to your friends, so they can see what you are playing and join in, yet also keep a few of those games just to yourself.

How do I mark a game as private?

There are three places where a game can be marked as private: from your shopping cart, your game list (which is accessible from a web browser), and from your Steam Client Library (Game page > Settings > Manage…)

You can learn more about private games on the FAQ

We’ve got more checkout-related updates in the works, so make sure to send us your feedback and report bugs.