I haven't tried anything during that "event", but before when I was going to my page I was able to see full phone number. Not to mention voluntary and involuntary e-mails flashed by "concerned users", who forgot to censor them down before posting.

Still, Valve's silence is quite worrying.

Updated article with statement from Valve: http://kotaku.com/steam-goes-nuts-offers-access-to-other-peoples-account-1749718979

Looks like they might be trying to sweep this one under the rug. No news from Steam’s own channels, no apology for the technical issues and silence, just a short quiet statement sent out to the outlets who wrote about it. Most Steam users may never know their basic information such as home address and email was potentially viewed by a third-party.

Big props to the community moderators for stepping up and doing Steam's job by maintaining communication and providing guidance during the chaos.

Is it safe to use my Steam client right now? I really want to play RAGE.

Probably. Use a condom just in case.

Don't joke about this man. I am serious can I log into Steam to play my games already? I won't even LOOK at the Steam store.

Again, if the site is down you likely can't login at all, no matter which digital distribution we're talking about, which includes GOG.

They didn't even triggered, so even assuming games or accounts were at risk, is beyond speculation and belonging into the conspiracy theory category.

So did I. I have a NAS set up for storage that fills up quickly and I'm somewhat reluctant to expand it. Fact is: HDs can fail, DVDs can get scratched / lost. In such a case, you'll need access to re-download, same as Steam. Has this been granted by ANY digital distribution ever? Not that I'm aware of....

I'm not defending Steam and I have no idea what happens, when the day comes where it shuts down or how / what Valve has planned for such a case. But let's face it: neither do you or anyone else.

However, if you want to go discuss maximum credible accident scenarios, assume the same for GOG and your DVDs lost / unreadable - everything else is just not valid.

From all that we actually know: yes.
I played / downloaded through this whole incident, on Steam and everything is as if nothing had happened.

They have closed and then reopened the service.They should be crazy if they reopened without resolving the problem. So it should be safe now.
I think.

It's safe yeah.

I've been using it for a few hours now with no issues. It's fine.

Has they released anything information about changing password? I'm planning on doing it just in case even if I have Steam Guard but since this has been about a caching issue I thought I would wait.

Nope, they only said this (and not to users, but media outlets. That's was funny.)

"Steam is back up and running without any known issues. As a result of a configuration change earlier today, a caching issue allowed some users to randomly see pages generated for other users for a period of less than an hour. This issue has since been resolved. We believe no unauthorized actions were allowed on accounts beyond the viewing of cached page information and no additional action is required by users."

Well, I guess Steam is in hot water...

"crickets chirping"

I'll show myself out...

Except that logging in is MANDATORY for Steam games. If I can't login to GOG Galaxy to play Freedom Planet, no problem because GOG accounts are NOT MANDATORY to play the game, let alone Galaxy. Therefore, if I logged out during this outrage while I was supposedly still on Steam, I wouldn't be able to play games unless I utilized the horrible offline mode, something I wouldn't trust to actually run offline.

I don't know what you mean, but okay.

And you can lose access to downloads, that is not far-fetched. Steam can go down for a great while without being able to download anything. You can lose access to your Steam account, be it through forgetting your login details or being changed and stolen by a scammer. It could be because of Steam going down the land of no return. The point is, with HDDs and DVDs, it is your responsibility to keep them safe and sound (which I do with my burned DVDs), but with downloads, your whole reliance is on the distributor being alive and still having access to them.


Again, with GOG, if the service died, but I happened to have the backups on DVDs, no problem. I can install them and play them for as long as I wish. But when Steam goes down, I can't reinstall or repair the games as many time as I want. And that's all for something that's not in your control. You can't take good care of Steam itself so it'll never go down, as you're not Valve. However YOU can take good care of your own DVDs in order to make them long-lived.

Finally, if you still prefer redownloading game backups, you could store the most important ones on cloud services. However, even those come with their prices.

My son, you have taken the first step on the path to DRM-Free Enlightenment. Though your journey has just begun, you shall face many trials of your willpower. The fruits of the destination will make it all worthwhile.