Steam Working On New Feature That Lets Users Hide Games From Friends

Soon, Steam will let you mark a game as private to hide it from your friends.

By Ricky Frech

Over the years, Steam has morphed into the most popular storefront for PC players thanks to Valve's continued updates to the service's feature set. That, and all the sales. Speaking of the former, today, it was revealed that the team is working on a new feature that on the surface might seem relatively basic, but actually has quite a bit of utility. There's no word yet on when it'll be available, but soon you'll be able to mark a game as private, thus hiding it from even your friends.

This news comes from Pavel Djundik on Twitter, though readers will probably know him best as the creator of SteamDB. That service tracks Steam's backend, often revealing details about upcoming games, current player counts, and more. In the tweet, you can see a screenshot of the upcoming "Mark as Private" feature, confirming that it's coming down the pike at some point. Again, there isn't any known release date yet, but one is likely forthcoming.

Why You Want to Mark a Game as Private on Steam?

In the comments, it's clear that most players first thought when seeing this feature is that it'll be used to hide some of the more adult games available on Steam. That's certainly going to be one of the use cases, but there are other reasons someone might use this. That includes hiding a game from your friends that you don't want them to ask you to play. 

Say you have a friend who plays a ton of DOTA 2 and is always asking you to join them, but you consistently say no. One day, you might decide to check it out, but you don't want your friend to bug you about it if you don't like it. Being able to mark it as private lets you do so without any pressure. Previously, you could use the "Appear Offline" option, but your friend would still be able to see DOTA 2 in your games list. 

Obviously, the former use case is probably going to be what the majority of players use it for, but it's not just a way to hide adult games from your friends and family. Hopefully, Valve will soon announce exactly when players can expect this update. Given that it's been revealed now, it seems reasonable to expect we'll hear more by the end of the year.

When Is The Next Steam Sale?

Steam sales are always marquee events for Valve's service, and players want to make sure they know when they're coming so they don't spend extra on a game. The next major sale is the Autumn Sale 2023, which kicks off on November 21. As one of the major seasonal sales, players can usually expect deep discounts. After all, this sale lines up with the Black Friday shopping period, so Valve generally pulls out all of the stops. That said, the Winter sale will come in December and will be equally massive.

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