Lately, Valve‘s been putting a big focus on beefing up Steam’s security-sometimes with measures that players find annoying or limiting.
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Valve revealed the figure this week as part of a blog post in which it pointed out that account theft is nothing new on Steam. Valve has now opted to walk us through its reasoning, and has some scary stats to back it up with. Has your Steam account ever been hacked? Absent that, this seems like a good compromise to encourage stronger security practices among Steam users while also discouraging hackers from easily profiting from the service’s lowest-hanging, least-secure fruit.
The prevalence of hacking is the reason why Steam now has a three-day wait on delivery for traded goods – unless the user has had two-factor authentication enabled for at least one week.
It is not the first time two-factor authentication is introduced to the Steam platform, as the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator has been available for quite some time now. Since accounts are worth real life money and have items worth hundreds and thousands of dollars, a sophisticated network of hackers have started to target accounts all over the network.
“Enough money now moves around the system that stealing virtual Steam goods has become a real business for skilled hackers”, Valve says.
Anyone losing items in a trade will now need to have the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator enabled on their account for at least seven days and have trade confirmations turned on.
Home console accounts are at the moment a smaller target for those who seek to hack accounts and get access to virtual items, mainly because it’s easier to try and breach security to find credit card numbers and identity information.
While Steam’s usual solution is to duplicate and restore stolen items to the original account, they understand that doing so would increase the number of rare trading cards, thereby reducing their value for everyone who owns that card.
Valve could just insist on two-factor authentication, but there are plenty of users who just can’t use the app for whatever reason.
“We see around 77,000 accounts hijacked and pillaged each month”.
By using a blockchain-based authentication system, there would be irrefutable proof of a Steam user being who they claim to be.
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For more details, you can visit Steam. However, most gamers are not using this additional layer of protection, despite the obvious it offers to ensure user accounts are kept safe at all times. “If you haven’t protected your account with a physical device, a trade hold will give you time to discover your account has been compromised and to prevent items from leaving your account”. “Unfortunately, this is one of those times where we feel like we’re forced to insert a step or shut it all down”.
