Steam is a video game digital distribution service and storefront from Valve. It was launched as a software client in September 2003 as a way for Valve to provide automatic updates for their games, and expanded to distributing third-party game publishers' titles in late 2005. Steam offers various features, like digital rights management (DRM), game server matchmaking with Valve Anti-Cheat measures, social networking and game streaming services. Steam client's functions include automatic game updates, cloud storage for game progress, and community features such as direct messaging, in-game overlay functions and a virtual collectable marketplace. Taken from Wikipedia.
Terms of Service , Privacy Policy, EULA
To spam you with every personal detail about your purchases for your email provider to read.
Tested with AnonAddy , heard reports of SimpleLogin working. If you somehow can't register with one try using an alias with a different domain name as domains with more than two periods (username.anonaddy.com) and the .xyz TLD are blocked by a lot of services.
Required to use the Steam Store, Marketplace and other various features.
Once you request the deletus accountus they're gonna ask you for additional verification to ensure you own the account. Nay!
For their userbase statistics thingy.
Steam constantly keeps track of your hardware and will occasionally ask you to submit it to their servers for aggregated data.
Pro tip: if you ever see a p**n game on the new releases, don't click on it no matter how riled up your curiosity is.
Eh, steam chat sucks anyways.
Cloudflare, Akamai, Edgecast, Highwinds (Stackpath), and Level 3 (CenturyLink) among others. Worst part is you can't exactly choose which one you want to connect to. Also uses Qwilted (Cqloud) and Akamai for downloading games.
Mainly from their own store to recommend you games you might be interested in.
Curse you Google Analytics!
You're gonna have to click this link if you want to opt out of all optional cookies. Luckily there's a reject all button on the top part of the page.
"We will only store your information as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which the information is collected and processed or - where the applicable law provides for longer storage and retention period - for the storage and retention period required by law. After that your Personal Data will be deleted, blocked or anonymized, as provided by applicable law".
You'd expect the minds behind Proton and SteamOS to release an open source version of the steam client. We'll be waiting, Gaben.
While I've never used one before, some popular options include Vapour and This python package which the developer just named "steam". SteamCMD is apparently a more privacy conscious option but I can't find the source code for it.
With all the Steam sales they give I'd imagine they're pretty self sufficient.
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Analysis: Not exactly a score I had in mind but I digress. Steam collects a ton of data and shares it with various 3rd parties but you can at least control a bit of it compared to the competition. My advice would be to opt out of all optional cookies, try blacklisting all but one of their many 3rd party CDNs to limit access to who has hands on your data, install the flatpak version if on Linux, buy Steam gift cards instead of paying directly, and input as little data as possible. Another thing I like to keep in mind is that I actually like telling people what games I play, so that at least takes a couple pounds off my shoulder.