Thread: Steam Guard- Coming soon

Valve has officially announced Steam Guard, which is a new form ?user rights management? in the words of Gabe Newell. There were all sorts of rumors about it yesterday, but now that Valve has made the official announcement it?s safe there?s no real reason to panic. The service is more about keeping your Steam account secure and out of the hands of evildoers than it is about punishing you for having the audacity to play games on the PC. Valve isn?t Ubisoft.

Steam Guard work similarly. You establish one computer as your home base. ?This is my primary gaming computer,? that kind of thing. Whenever you try to log into your account from a different computer, Steam automatically sends a randomly generated password to your e-mail account. In order to log in from this different computer you?ll need your account name, regular password, and also the randomly generated one that?s sent to your e-mail account at time of login.

This makes it all the more difficult for someone to log into your Steam account without your authorization.

Valve’s Steam Guard: Protecting Your Account From Evildoers Since 2011

Surely they can base this on IP as opposed to an individual machine. I have two gaming PCs I go between and this just sounds like a pain in the arse.

Is it opt-in or opt-out? Cause if so then it sounds good to me.

Well I think it requires Sandy bridge cpu/chipset for it to work. Im sure steam would allow 2-3 machines to use the same account.

Well if based primarily on an IP address system, your routers external IP address assigned to you by your ISP is the one which will be noted, this wont effect any sort of pc hot swapping you want to do in the comfort of your own home which is actually not a bad idea, however if you want to go to a LAN or just take your pc on the road or to a mates place, thats where issues will start to appear.

Originally Posted by CreatioNz

Well if based primarily on an IP address system, your routers external IP address assigned to you by your ISP is the one which will be noted, this wont effect any sort of pc hot swapping you want to do in the comfort of your own home which is actually not a bad idea, however if you want to go to a LAN or just take your pc on the road or to a mates place, thats where issues will start to appear.

Another thing to add. Each time u restart your router. You will get a new dynamic ip unless your on a static ip.

IPs are easily spoofed and like others have said, the majority of people operate with dynamic IPs...

Good idea Steam!

Blizzard have a similiar system for battle net I've only had one issue with it and that was when I my internode ADSL went and tried to quickily log back in with my telstra 3g modem.

Well steam by default activates steam guard.
There is an option to disable it, so good for those that opt out