Bye Bye Steam Spy

In the wake of the GDPR regulations and Cambridge Analytica scandal, there's been an increased focus recently on the security of data. Valve have not missed this, and a recent update to Steam changes the way that users profiles are viewed. It's a great thing for anyone security conscious but not tech savvy enough to have locked down their profiles, but not necessarily for the creator of Steam Spy.

The analytic service, used by many smaller developers to plan their marketing as well as potential purchasers of games who wanted more info on the community, has had to shut down. In a post on Twitter, service creator Sergey Galyonkin explained what happened.

Valve just made a change to their privacy settings, making games owned by Steam users hidden by default.

Steam Spy relied on this information being visible by default and won't be able to operate anymore.https://t.co/0ejZgRQ6Kd

— Steam Spy (@Steam_Spy) April 11, 2018

The service has been running since 2015 and was incredibly popular, but sadly with big data being the new oil (fill in your buzz word bingo cards everyone), this is a sadly necessary precaution on Valve's part.