No, Steam User Data Was Not Compromised In a Hack, Confirms Valve

Valve has dismissed caller reports its Steam level suffered a "major" information hack, confirming determination was "NOT a breach" of Steam systems.

While immoderate users were acrophobic astir reports that implicit 89 cardinal idiosyncratic records were compromised, Steam's ain investigation determined that portion determination has been a leak of "older substance messages," those one-time codification SMSs did not see immoderate idiosyncratic data.

In a connection posted to Steam, Valve said that aft examining the leak sample, it has determined lawsuit information has not been compromised, saying: "The leak consisted of older substance messages that included one-time codes that were lone valid for 15-minute clip frames and the telephone numbers they were sent to. The leaked information did not subordinate the telephone numbers with a Steam account, password information, outgo accusation oregon different idiosyncratic data."

"Old substance messages cannot beryllium utilized to breach the information of your Steam account, and whenever a codification is utilized to alteration your Steam email oregon password utilizing SMS, you volition person a confirmation via email and/or Steam unafraid messages," the institution added.

Valve did, however, instrumentality the accidental to punctual players to acceptable up the Steam Mobile Authenticator to supply 2-factor information arsenic it is "the champion mode to nonstop unafraid messages astir your relationship and your account's safety."

Given the prolific emergence successful information breaches and the information that implicit 89 cardinal of america person a Steam account, users had bully crushed to beryllium disquieted astir a imaginable information compromise. The astir infamous video game-related information breach occurred successful 2011 erstwhile PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable networks suffered a terrible outage lasting astir a month, with 77 cardinal accounts compromised arsenic a effect of the hack.

And it's not conscionable lawsuit information that's astatine risk. Just past October, Pokémon developer Game Freak suffered a important hack wherever information astir its erstwhile and existent unit was leaked, arsenic good arsenic its improvement pipeline. One twelvemonth erstwhile successful 2023, Sony besides confirmed information of astir 7,000 of its existent and erstwhile employees had been compromised successful 2 breaches that year, and successful December 2023, hackers breached confidential information astatine Marvel's Spider-Man developer, Insomniac.

Vikki Blake is simply a reporter, critic, columnist, and consultant. She's besides a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her astatine BlueSky.