Valve Admits Steam Intrusion, No Current Evidence of Fraud
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Steam's message boards were compromised Sunday, and it's been investigating since.It’s one thing when a message board gets compromised, it’s quite another when it’s one of the most popular services amongst PC users.
An unidentified user or group of users gained access to the Steam message boards on Sunday, and subsequently “obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums,” the company said today.
The statement, signed by founder Gabe Newell, claims the company has found no evidence of credit card fraud, but recommends users to monitor their financial accounts closely. Even if you didn’t have an account on the Steam message boards, Valve recommends changing your password.
“I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience,” said Newell.”
Users accessed “a Steam database in addition to the forums” that had user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses, and encrypted credit card information.There is currently no evidence the credit card information has been decrypted, and Valve is “still investigating.”
Only a few message board accounts were reportedly compromised, and they “do not know of any compromised Steam accounts” at this time.
Basically, change your password. If Valve issues further updates, I’ll let you know.
Valve Addresses Steam Security Breach and Stolen Info
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Earlier this week, Steam's forums were breached by hackers, and while that is a nuisance, it's not as bad as the database itself getting hacked. Well it turns out in a message from Valve's Gabe Newell, that yes, indeed the database was hacked. I knew it was weird that I couldn't log into Steam the other day.
At least, unlike Sony, Valve's wisely decided to show some transparency and keep its customers in the know asap. Here's what they had to say about the compromised information and what it means:
This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.
Don't go freaking out just yet. The letter goes on to say that "we don't have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely." Further, they "do not know of any compromised Steam accounts." Because of this, a password change hasn't been deemed mandatory, but Valve advises it nonetheless.
Hopefully this doesn't get any worse and we don't have another PSN fiasco on our hands.
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Valve Offering Free Portal 2 and DOTA 2 After Security Breach?
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Yesterday we reported on Steam's security breach in which their database was accessed by hackers, who made off with encrypted personal information such as passwords, email and billing addresses, and possibly credit card numbers.
Today there's more news, but it's of the nicer variety. From an email that was sent by Gabe Newell, Valve is going to be "rolling out some free copies of DOTA 2 and Portal 2 soon". It's not clear from the email whether that move is meant to appease customers worried about the leak, but with the timing of it one would guess that's the case.
It's also important to stress again that any information accessed was heavily encrypted and Valve doesn't have cause to believe that we'll need to change our passwords or credit card info. That kind of a claim is usually small comfort, but Valve has a history of transparency and honesty with its customers.
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EA: "Valve Is Run by Clever People."
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Posted on Monday, October 3 @ 11:15:20 Eastern by Nick_Tan
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In a quote with GamesIndustry, Jens Uwe Intat, Head of EA Europe, believes that EA's relationship with Valve will continue to be healthy, as long as it's about Valve letting their product be published and distributed by them:
Peter Moore, in a full interview with Gamescom, Peter Moore has no problems with Steam... except for one caveat:Valve is run by very clever people, and I would say that's also true for Electronic Arts, we're all good business people. So, Valve, when they're looking for distribution for their products, looking at which publisher could actually do that, then I think we're the best publisher on the planet, both in Europe and North America.
There's no strain on that relationship because we're competing in one space... I think, as an industry, we're pretty good at competing and co-operating at the same time.
[Source 1, Source 2]We want to be able to support our customer directly. If there are opportunities to do that, then we'll do that. If Valve, through Steam are willing to allow us to do that, then there are no issues whatsoever. In the instances where you're not seeing a game on Steam, it's primarily because we can't deal directly with our consumer to resolve issues and do things we want to be able to do.
Blizzard and valve are above to uniform online community, Sony
Blizzard Entertainment and valve software close towards the ideal of a single online space between all consoles.
Gabe Newell said valve, develop magazine, that it would be "Ideal for a single online community, regardless of the platform to have playing on the players," Frank Pearce and Blizzard Entertainment has separately develop magazine said that the industry needs "Figure", as one the Internet better place to find out how to customers from the Internet.
With the success of Portal-2 (and the upcoming counter strike: global offensive) on cross platform play between the PC and PS3, valve already expressed his disappointment with Microsoft's online restrictions while praise Sony for PS3's open platform. Sony plans to cross-platform game with PC for CCP Games upcoming dust 514.
At the same time, Pierce, accepts that cross-platform game might not best for each game:
[Source]Do have a gaming experience on the PC that you want to enjoy the people must to the console adapt components of this experience on various platforms. Maybe that's not a level playing field. There are perhaps some games best as a shared community, as a common gameplay experience. It really was fully dependent on the game.
