Yesterday, Steam's privacy settings were updated to make things a little clearer when deciding who can see your Steam profile and what exactly they can see. This means that you can now hide the games you've purchased or wishlisted, along with any achievements and playtime you may have associated with them.
At first glance, this appears to be Valve's initial response to the huge privacy scandal surrounding Facebook's relationship with British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica. (We've asked Valve for comment.)
However, these changes have also led to a potentially unexpected side effect: the imminent closure of the largest Steam stats service on the Internet, Steam Spy.
This site ran as a side project by Sergey Galyonkin, the Director of Publishing Strategy at Epic Games, and relies entirely on data gathered from Steam user profiles to estimate sales figures and current trends within the PC gaming space. This has proven popular with players and developers alike.
Galyonkin announced yesterday that Steam Spy "won't be able to operate anymore", as a result of these changes. We spoke to him to find out more.