Steam Deck

Good news! Valve's privacy policy, which covers the Steam Deck and the Steam store, doesn't raise any huge privacy concerns for us. It’s a little vague for our tastes, but we didn’t see any big red flags. We like that they say they don't require users to provide a real name when signing up for a Steam User Account. You will need to provide an email and a user name, and then will be assigned a Steam ID number that will be used to reference your account, rather than something more personally identifiable. This is good. Of course, Valve still says they can collect personal information on you, including any information you provide identifying yourself in posts to chats or message boards, so, as always, be aware of what you share online.

We also like that Valve says they don’t sell data. Yay! They make no explicit mention in their privacy policy if they share data with third parties for targeted advertising purposes. It’s always nice when a privacy policy explicitly states they do or do not share your personal information like that. However, you can bet that Valve knows what games you're playing, when you’re playing, for how long, and the like so they can target you with ads for similar games. Through their API, the software that connects to other software, Steam makes certain user information available to other players and their partners. That includes your alias, avatar, and whether you’ve cheated in a multiplayer game. Not that any of you all would have to worry about that! All in all, it’s pretty standard stuff.

Valve does say they can process anonymous data and they may share anonymous data, aggregated or not, with third parties. This is a fairly common practice and doesn’t worry us too much. However, it is always good to remind people that some anonymous data has been found to be relatively easy to re-identify. But, Valve does grant everyone -- regardless of whether or not you live under strong privacy laws -- the right to delete their data. So, that's good and a good thing to do from time to time.

Here’s the bad news about the Steam Deck though. We can’t confirm it meets our Minimum Security Standards because we can’t confirm it uses encryption or if Valve has a way to manage security vulnerabilities. We emailed Valve three times with our privacy and security questions again this year and, just like last year, haven’t heard back from them. (It’s super common for brands to ignore our messages to their privacy inbox, but still a bummer.) There is a lot written out there on the internet about how to set up encryption on the Linux-based SteamOS yourself, but you have to be pretty tech savvy to sort it out. And, we don’t think that users should have to go through that to protect their data. If you would like some easier tips to make your Steam Deck more private, we found this article pretty helpful.

What’s the worst that could happen with your Steam Deck playing all those games online? Well, Steam is an online gaming community and those have been known to be pretty toxic, especially to women, the LGBTQ+ community, and minority gamers. So, be careful what you share on those public chats and message boards. Because while Valve might indicate they are doing a decent job handling your personal information, we’re not so sure every person on Steam will do the same. You don’t need to get doxxed or swatted or whatever the latest form of gaming harassment is because you overshared (or heck, just even shared) while playing Call of Duty.