There can be several reasons for a Steam player to make the profile public or private. On this page you get a quick guide how change your Steam profile privacy settings.
What is Steam Profile Privacy?
The Steam profile privacy desribes who can see your Steam profile activity, which includes your game library, friendlist, last played games and achievement history.
For the Steam profile, privacy 3 options are available: Public, Friends Only, and Private. Each state can have additional filters, which give you control over what other people can see about you.
How to make your Steam Profile Public or Private?
To make your Steam profile public, follow these steps:
- Open the steam window and find the profile tab with your name:
- Now click on the button “edit profile”.
- In this area, click on “My Privacy Settings” in the menu on the right side.
- On the steam privacy settings page you can now set your profile to public or private.
The first option will make the overall profile public or private. Afterward, you can choose custom settings for each of the following options: Game Details, Friends List, Inventory, and Profile Comments. For the game details, you can also decide to show or hide the latest playtime of the last 2 weeks.After changing an option it is automatically saved and you can close the window.
- Tip: After changing the Steam profile to public, it can need about 10 minutes for other service websites to retrieve the profile data.
What is the Reason to Make a Steam Profile Public?
The most obvious reason to make your Steam profile public is, to give friends the possibility to view your activity. Like that you can express yourself and even configure your steam profile page with the information you love to show. It will give information on what you are currently playing and what your latest purchases and achievements are.
Another reason is to give profile data to a third service side.
This can be another non-steam website that allows the Steam-SSO login. For example statistics websites allow you to display your CS:GO statistic data of all placed matches, used weapons, and so on.
This data will only be accessible for other websites if you allow that, through a public profile.
What is the Reason to Make a Steam Profile Private?
The most common reason, why Steam players make their profile private is, that they don’t want strangers to see their activity. Steam is for playing games and many people don’t want to share their playtime and game titles.
Many game titles are even non-safe-for-work or have content that could be rated negatively, like super crazy games or 18+ game titles. It’s a good choice to hide playing these titles because anyone on the web could google your Steam account, for example, your next boss or girlfriend.
Also for females, it can be annoying to get too many friend’s requests, because Steam had been a very male community in the past, which is changing over time.
Any questions? Comment below! 🙂
