Steam has many ways to keep your gaming habits secret from other people. One of the best tools is the option to mark a single game as private. This is perfect if you want to keep your friend list active but don’t want everyone to see one specific game you are playing. Normally Steam tells all your friends exactly when you start a game. This is usually great for playing together but sometimes you just want some peace and quiet.
In the past you had to hide your entire profile to get any privacy. That was annoying because it blocked your friends from seeing anything at all. Now you can pick and choose which games stay hidden while the rest of your profile stays public. When you mark a game as private it looks like you don’t even own it. Your friends won’t see it in your library and they won’t get a notification when you start playing it. Even your achievements and total play time stay completely invisible to the world.
There are three easy ways to hide a game from your library. If you already own the game you can just right-click it and look under the manage menu. You can also do this through the Steam website by looking at your game list on your profile. If you are buying a brand new game you can even hide it before you pay. There is a small option in the shopping cart to mark the purchase as private right away.
There are a few things to remember when using this privacy setting. Since Steam thinks you don’t own the game a friend might accidentally try to buy it for you as a gift. You also cannot earn any Steam trading cards while you are playing a hidden game. Another small issue is that you cannot share the game files over your local home network. These are small trade-offs for keeping your gaming life a bit more personal.
Can you play with friends after setting the ‘private game’ option on Steam?
Playing with friends is still possible even if a game is set to private. If you want to play a match with someone you can send them a direct invite. That specific person will be able to see you are in the game but nobody else on your friend list will know. This gives you total control over who sees your activity at any time. It is a great way to enjoy your library without feeling like everyone is watching what you do.
