Chaos bei Steam Winter Sale – Konsumparadies geschlossen, Datenschutz-Probleme [Update]

During the Winter Sale on the Steam platform, major issues occurred on Saturday evening. The store is temporarily closed.

You log into Steam to increase the stack of unplayed games to Everest size, and suddenly you have the account of someone else, can see their email address, check the sales history, and get a glimpse of other private data.

This unsettling experience (Can anyone now see my data?) was faced by Steam users on Saturday evening. As several media outlets report, the language was also changed to that of the “new” account.

In the meantime, the Steam store is down, users cannot log in, probably so that Valve can fix the issues. Details regarding the chaos hours at Valve will likely be released in the coming days.

Experts advise: Stay away from Steam, do not visit the site

At the moment, it seems that due to a technical error at Steam, users have been able to see “cached pages” of other users. If that is the case, people familiar with Steam but not employees recommend, to completely stay away from Steam, not to click on links leading there, and not to change any of your data there. Instead, you could remove Steam authorization via PayPal, but not through Steam the PayPal link, as that would again cache pages that others could see.

Valve is having caching issues allowing users to view things such as account information of other users. Don’t use Store for now.

— Steam Database (@SteamDB) December 25, 2015

A Community person from Steam, who also does not work for Valve, stated that Valve is working on the problem and, apart from a few numbers, no “really relevant” data has been leaked to others – even a “foreign purchase” seems to be impossible. That is the statement that currently comes closest to an official announcement.

But it remains: The information situation is still unclear, we are waiting for an official explanation.

Valve says: Problem is resolved and under control

There is an official statement from Valve: Steam is running smoothly again. A configuration change yesterday led to a caching problem that allowed users to randomly see pages created for other users. This lasted for less than an hour. The problem has now been resolved. Valve believes that no unauthorized actions were possible; only the information on the cached page could be read. They believe that it is not necessary for users to take any action now.