Valve Will Examine Copying of Steam Data by Epic Games Store

Valve has answered the controversies related to Epic Games Store client, which allegedly downloads sensitive user data related to their Steam account.

Yesterday we wrote about another controversy over the Epic Games Store. Concerned players found out that the store's client app downloads data from the Steam folder of the user, including those of the games they are currently running (along saved games), as well as friend lists, even if we did not agree to its import. What's more, the process is likely to start when you install the platform - the client is copying this information even before we log into our Epic Store account for the first time. Valve quickly addressed the situation by posting a statement on BleepingComputer, who was the first to describe the problem. The owners of Steam assured that they were looking into the problem. They also included tips on how to check which information could be intercepted by the Epic Store.

We are looking into what information the Epic launcher collects from Steam.

The Steam Client locally saves data such as the list of games you own, your friends list and saved login tokens (similar to information stored in web browser cookies). This is private user data, stored on the user's home machine and is not intended to be used by other programs or uploaded to any 3rd party service.

Interested users can find localconfig.vdf and other Steam configuration files in their Steam Client’s installation directory and open them in a text editor to see what data is contained in these files. They can also view all data related to their Steam account at: this adress

The matter is therefore of developmental origin. We will soon see if Steam will decide to improve the security of the users' sensitive data in the future.

It's worth mentioning that Epic Store representatives responded to the controversy yesterday, apologizing to the players. According to them, the data collected by the app is not sent to the company's servers. The process itself is to be used, among other things, in connection with the Support-a-Creator program and when importing information about Steam friend lists. In the latter case, the platform sends only user IDs. The CEO of Epic Games has even admitted that an application should not obtain data from Valve unless you choose to download a the friend list. As he said, the process is a remnant of a "hasty implementation of social functions", and he took full responsibility for the confusion and added that the company will soon fix this "issue".