UPDATE 5/3/24: The ability to mark individual games in your library as private has now rolled out across Steam on desktop, mobile, and Steam Deck following a couple of months in beta.
In Valve’s announcement of the update rolling out, the company summarised the changes included. As well as making games in your library private, you can now mark a game as private before you buy it, ensuring there’s no public record of you owning whatever it is you want to keep secret.
There’s now also an easier way to gift games to multiple friends at a time, and your cart will be synchronised across all devices.
The new features should be available from when you sign into Steam, if you weren’t already using them through the Steam Client Beta.
ORIGINAL STORY 21/12/23: If there are some games you would rather your friends and family didn’t know you were playing, for whatever reason that may be, Steam has your back.
As part of its recent Steam Client Beta update, Valve has added the ability for players to mark certain games as private. How handy!
“Starting today you’ll be able to mark specific games as private and they’ll disappear from anywhere they’d be viewed by someone other than you,” it wrote on Steam.
“That includes: your ownership, in-game status, playtime, and activity in that game. This additional control allows you to keep most of your Steam Library visible to your friends, so they can see what you are playing and join in, yet also keep a few of those games just to yourself.”