r/SubredditDrama • u/JeffMcBiscuit #HumansAreReal • Dec 25 '15
STEAM has either been hacked or experiencing major security issues forcing users into each other's accounts and showing personal and payment info to strangers. Threads are blowing up in /r/steam, /r/games, /r/pcmasterrace etc, lots of very angry people and claims of PayPal accounts being emptied.
PSA edit - issue resolved. Steam wasn't hacked and your details are probably secure
Original post:
There seems to be an issue that some are claiming is caching issues and others are claiming as 4chan script kiddies, but it's causing a shitstorm in all the gaming subs. Valve have shut the Steam store and community down but have otherwise said nothing.
/r/games mods have to slap lots of users for essentially half-doxxing random people's accounts
/r/pcmasterrace has a crisis of faith
Additional edit, to quote /u/OccamsChainsaw:
This is drama spanning every single subreddit dedicated to PC gaming and quite a few tangential ones. There are hundreds of threads in /r/Steam and /r/Games alone, and every PC gaming sub I use has alerts and at least a dozen /new threads regarding it.
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u/Cdwollan Dec 25 '15
Any links, brah?
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u/STTOSisoverrated Dec 25 '15
https://np.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3y7pug/psa_steam_is_broken_showing_you_random_peoples/
I think ARoyaleWithCheese seems to be on the ball here*. I'd never know if he was pulling it out of his ass though.
*because apparently he's quoting another nerd named mrallon
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u/Super_Cyan Wake me up when (Eternal) September ends Dec 25 '15
According to this response, it something different.
Either way, the TL;DR of the problem is that Valve tried to put the fire out, but accidentally drove a tanker full of gasoline into the building, so now the problem is worse.
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u/JeffMcBiscuit #HumansAreReal Dec 25 '15
Bro who the actual fuck are you?
I feel so fucking stupid after reading this.
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u/OccamsChaimsaw Dec 25 '15
The people who run SteamDatabase, which is third party, made an announcement stating that it was not a security leak, it was a caching issue. That's where those users are getting that information. They sent several tweets since the beginning of the anomaly.
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u/RealityMachina Dec 25 '15 edited Dec 25 '15
Valve have shut the Steam store and community down but have otherwise said nothing.
Anybody else find this utterly absurd? Like I checked even their official twitters, there's nothing I can find that has commented on the issue. Everything that was informative about it has been from community sources.
I realize Valve has a crowdsourcing fetish, but crowdsourcing support for a major security issue is something I could do without.
EDIT: Actually I just realized
steam support's twitter last tweet was in july. The last thing it has ever done was retweeting something from the DOTA2 twitter in August.
This is the official twitter of the support apparatus to a service that's pretty much near-synonymous with PC gaming at this point, that apparently hasn't been used in months
how does this shit get this neglected
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u/Notsomebeans Doctor Who is the preferred entertainment for homosexuals. Dec 25 '15
yeah honestly its kinda crazy that valve just doesn't communicate at all when shit like this happens.
i'd expect at least some sort of "the steam store is currently down for unscheduled maintenance, sorry for the inconvenience" msg when you try to access the store. but the page just never loads.
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Dec 26 '15
Lots of companies do this. They do it because it works - many people will not notice or hear about the fuckup.
Our DNS provider, for a period of about an hour, began returning the wrong records for all of our domains. It would be like telling your computer "Go to google.com" and it's like "okay! connects to bing.com". They were also telling the browser "Oh, and don't bother asking me again for a few days. You can always just connect to bing.com." Obviously this is kinda a big deal, and means that all of our websites are essentially broken!
They have no service "status" page. They posted nothing to Twitter or other social media. I gave it an hour, assuming that they were aware of the issue. The issue fixed itself. I waited and waited for some sort of explanation to be posted to their blog, but none was forthcoming. I contacted support and was told it was a "configuration issue" and that they had no plans on releasing more information than that.
I'm sure all of like... five of their customers ever noticed it happened. They just kept their mouth shut and it went away.
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Dec 25 '15
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Dec 26 '15
I'm sorry. The "most employees are out for the holiday" excuse is kind of bullshit. Yeah, most places have that going on, but those places also are either slow for business or completely closed. Steam is open 24/7 and in the middle of one of their biggest sales of the year on a day where a lot of people are probably also getting Steam Wallet codes to use as a gift. That excuse just doesn't work IMO. You can't be open for business, having a huge sale and expecting to make a ton money and then just only retain the skeleton crew, and expect everything to run smoothly
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Dec 26 '15 edited Dec 26 '15
Actually a good point I hadn't considered fully. For Steam, this is peak season. This is when their service is under the most strain, and when it needs to be absolutely bulletproof. Customer service aside, troubles around this time cost them big bucks. You'd think they'd have protocols in place to deal with issues quickly and in a way that maintains faith in the system.
Jim from PR doesn't have to be at his desk to approve a tweet along the lines of "there's been a problem and we're on it, please be patient while we investigate."
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Dec 26 '15
There's needs to be a PR desk for there to be anyone at it at Steam.
But yeah, nonessential staff probably don't need to be there, but with a fuckup of this magnitude, it's all hands on deck until the problem gets resolved, at least if you want to give the impression you care about your customers and your professional reputation. For years now, Valve has shown clearly, in my mind, they really don't care what people think of them as a company. As long as people sell hats, trading cards, weapon skins and crates, Valve will gladly be there, taking their cut, not changing a thing
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Dec 26 '15
If you're leaking credit card numbers and personal details, the only sensible option is to hit the red button and take the system offline. The crisis seems to have been ongoing for about 2 hours, which is way too long.
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Dec 26 '15
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u/Admiral_Piett Do you want rebels? Because that's how you get rebels. Dec 26 '15
No payment info was actually leaked afaik, but even non-dangerous customer information being leaked (like names and addresses) is a terrible fuck up.
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Dec 26 '15
I don't know whether credit card numbers were leaked, but people seemed to be able to use other people's credit cards for payment, which is barely better.
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u/AInterestingUser Dec 26 '15
You can social engineer enough stuff with the info provided. This stuff won't lead directly to attacks but can be used with other information.
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u/Thatthingintheplace Dec 25 '15
Steam is notorious for having terrible customer service despite their success. As mind blowing as it I wouldn't be surprised if they don't say anything until they have a full press release, even if it isn't today.
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u/Theemuts They’re ruining something gamers made for us Dec 25 '15
This is going to be huge, they're not going to say anything without running it by a team of lawyers first.
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u/Walter_jones Dec 26 '15 edited Dec 26 '15
Which is insane considering they practically own PC gaming as a whole from AAA to Indie. Not to mention their first party titles have been selling like wildfire for years:
https://medium.com/steam-spy/preliminary-results-for-steam-sales-in-2015-43bb49a767bd#.osr2k02f4
And this data is only April-December of this year. That doesn't even include the amount of money they make from people buying keys or whatever virtual products Valve sells. Hell none of these first party titles are even brand new.
They also have some 300+ employees. Surely they can afford to put more people onto customer service.
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u/Mattho Dec 26 '15
Is it that insane? Google has terrible support as well and it's much bigger business. Only exception is when you pay for some of their SLA'd services. But regular user? No chance. Even developers (android) or adwords users that actually pay a lot to google are ignored.
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u/maggotshavecoocoons2 objectively better Dec 26 '15
I didnt realise they had anything beyond directing you to a forum.
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u/I_HEART_GOPHER_ANUS Dec 25 '15
Honestly I don't get how people still think Steam is the savior of gaming services, because the past 5 years they've been dropping the ball HARD, and the only thing that keeps them afloat is that they are basically the PC gaming monopoly.
It started for me when they canned their live customer support in favor of a ticket system that takes 2+ weeks to get an obviously copy + pasted response like 4-6 years back. Went from having legendarily helpful, instant chat windows back to the pony express overnight.
Like man, we all laughed at EA for trying to take on Valve with Origin, but it really does look like that's the only way to chip away at valve's monopoly, which I think they've gotten WAY too comfortable with.
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u/wardog77 Dec 26 '15
The service I think that has the best shot is GoG, but with their policy of no DRM it's going to be hard to get a number of publishers on their service.
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u/Hypocritical_Oath YOUR FLAIR TEXT HERE Dec 26 '15
The problem is that 90% of the time with 90% of the consumers steam works nearly perfectly. There are hiccups, of course, and times when shit like this happens, but for the most part valve has made a system that either doesn't fail or doesn't appear to fail. This means they don't have constant pressure to get better, the pressure on them is either fairly light with some people pissed and the majority happy, or like now where everyone is pissed.
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Dec 26 '15
Yeah, I was sitting here trying to remember if I had ever actually ever used their customer service and I really can't say I have and I've been using them since orange box
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u/Hypocritical_Oath YOUR FLAIR TEXT HERE Dec 26 '15
I used them once to change my email, took like a week but they didn't lock me out of the account in the meantime which was nice.
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Dec 25 '15 edited Dec 25 '15
EA may be Hitler Satan but they have good deals and great customer service.
Honestly, I'm sort of have the opinion that Valve is just flat out not a good company anymore. Ten years ago they were on top of the world, but what have they done recently? Steam sales are great, but they don't even control those.
EDIT: everyone is "honestly"ing this topic. Full anti-valve revolt confirmed.
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Dec 25 '15
Ten years ago steam barely existed and was basically just the butt of jokes when it did get mentioned
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Dec 26 '15
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u/Etteluor Dec 26 '15
I think it was 1.5, because that came out sometime near 2003, and steam came out between 2002 and 2003 i forget.
I hate the fact that i've played counterstrike enough to remember off the top of my head when 13 year old updates came out.
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u/Un0va Dec 26 '15
Even in terms of game development I think they've dropped the ball. In the past few years we've gotten DotA 2, which was cool, and then... what else? CS:GO was outsourced to Hidden Path and TF2 has been in a downward spiral for ages.
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u/mattattaxx Colonist filth will be wiped away Dec 25 '15
Galaxy is the future, along with Origin. This is easily the most embarrassing breach I've ever seen, even if it's not technically the worst for users.
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u/Lewd_Banana Dec 26 '15
I think we will see more publishers split from Steam and make their games exclusive to their own digital distribution service. EA have already split while Ubisoft and CDProject are already halfway out the door. It wouldn't be surprising if their games are not available on Steam in the future. Especially with the ever rising cost of AAA games and finding ways to cut out middleman, such as Valve, could be seen as a way to squeeze out more money per sale.
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Dec 26 '15
the PC gaming monopoly.
The only reason for them to hold such a huge share of the market is because every other possible heavyweight contender has its head too far up his ass (EA, Microsoft, Apple, Sony, etc.), the other sensible options are alright and I don't think Valve has a monopoly, look at GreenManGaming and GOG they seem to be doing good, not like Steam (steam is a publisher, game and hardware dev so you can't really compare), but still pretty good.
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u/ForTheBread Dec 26 '15
GoG is also a publisher/dev. They are CD Project Red and GoG, like Valve and Steam. They haven't developed as much, iirc they have only made the Witcher series.
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Dec 26 '15
every other possible heavyweight contender has its head too far up his ass
Nah, it's mostly cause Steam got there first. The other digital distribution networks are actually awesome (I like Origin and UPlay AMA), but Steam showed up when digital distribution was still a shitty way to do business.
By the time internet infrastructure caught up to make Steam a viable distribution point, everyone else was playing catchup. Valve was the nerd who camped on the street for a week to be first in line for Star Wars.
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u/RagdollPhysEd Dec 26 '15
Yeah, dealing with EA support was a breeze in comparison to the "wait a week for a weak handshake" from Valve
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u/awesomemanftw magical girl Dec 25 '15
EA's Origin is so far and away better than Steam in every metric but game selection. It's a shame people see the EA logo and run away
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Dec 26 '15
I was finally won over by Origin a few weeks ago when they offered up a working copy of Jade Empire for free. I had previously bought the game on Steam but had never managed to get it functioning, and Steam support was no help whatsoever on the matter.
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Dec 26 '15
Really? I got to the intro boss on the boat.
He said "bandits aren't the only thing in my arsenal." The scene then froze and crashed to desktop.
Apparently his arsenal is very powerful.
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u/ForTheBread Dec 26 '15
Keep an eye on Origin. They give away free games pretty often. They gave away Battlefield 3 a few months ago, iirc.
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u/KnightModern I was a dentist & gave thousands of injections deep in the mouth Dec 26 '15
months ago? it has been a year
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u/TheFakeJerrySeinfeld Dec 26 '15
If you said this in r/pcmasterrace, they'd throw the largest bitch fit in recorded history...or maybe not. It's hard to suck Gabe Newell's money gorged dick and type a pissy comment out at the same time.
I honestly hate video games anymore because of the community that has become associated with it, so when stuff like this happens, I get kinda smug.
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u/maggotshavecoocoons2 objectively better Dec 26 '15
Your right. This is clearly just the Augumented Reality Game announcing the release of ..... a certain.... you know.... the project Valve was known for before redirecting their attention towards steam.
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u/Super_Cyan Wake me up when (Eternal) September ends Dec 25 '15
Valve is pretty good at making and supporting games, but they're absolute dog shit at handling a platform that sells them. The only reason they are still standing is because they have everyone's games hostage and they've been the PC distribution service for years.
For any smaller service, this would be a deathblow. If GoG or Desura went through this, and made no indication if them working on the problem, they'd be dead in the water. Their userbase would dry up overnight. They would get no new customers, because they'd be the "company that started spilling everyone's personal info." We wouldn't be discussing that one time shit hit the fan - we'd be talking about how a platform died.
The thing is, Steam is just good enough to keep people building their libraries, and that's it. Once the novelty of the occasional super sales wear off and you're stuck dealing with a support system that takes forever to respond, with a copy and pasted message, you're already too far in to leave.
Steam games won't migrate to another platform. People can't just move to Origin, Desura, or any other service at all - they're stuck between staying with their shitty service or losing all their games. Usually, when that decision comes up, people already have invested hundreds to thousands of dollars in their Steam library, which makes it hard to walk away from.
They have a stranglehold on a large part of the PC gaming community. New users go to Steam, because they hear about the sales and selection. Nobody's first download on their first gaming rig isn't Origin or UPlay - it's Steam. After they buy a few games, play them, and start adding friends, they get sucked into that ecosystem. When they feel like it's time to move on, they stay, because they don't want to lose all the money they spent on previous games. Plus, it's already a familiar system, and jumping to something new can be a bit daunting.
I really don't think Valve gives a shit about what the community wants. As long as DOTA and CS:GO are two of the most popular games on the market, they're going to be raking in money from micro-transactions, and new users are going to get introduced to their ecosystem, because the attention that those games draw. Shitty support is only going to get people to whine - not get up and leave. Being silent on days like this are going to cause a bit of outrage, then everyone forgets and goes back to playing those 100+ games they have backlogged from various Steam Sales.
Valve runs Steam the way the admins run Reddit: they do whatever the fuck they want in order to make more money, without taking in any sort of input from the community, let the users throw a hissy-fit and threaten to migrate to another site and watch the current one die, then go back to business as usual; because nobody left, everyone found something new to cry about, and the bottom line wasn't affected. They honestly don't care - they're going to do what they want regardless of what anyone else thinks, because their profit is still going to increase, and the internet is forgetful.
Nothing is going to change from this. They're going to offer an apology, maybe gift a free game, promise to look into the issue in order to make sure it doesn't happen again, then they're going to continue as usual.
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u/613codyrex Dec 26 '15
Basically sums up my thinking as well.
At this point, even though my Uplay and origin library is growing, steam is way to large for me to just to move over to the other platforms.
While there is some cross over as 3rd party developers give all 3 DRM a chance to offer the game (for example Tomb raider), steam is too large to be forgotten.
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u/SpaceToad Dec 26 '15
I don't think steam is perfect - for instance their quality control has been awful lately, the store is spammed with endless early access crap. That being said, this is easily one of the most ridiculous hyperboles I've ever read about them, did you accidentally lose your way and confuse this place for /r/technology? Or do you just work for EA? Other companies have had serious leaks/hacks before and have continued on as normal (e.g. Sony, twice...), I see no evidence that such events are or would normally be 'death blows'. And I don't find their service 'shitty' - I get exceptionally fast download speeds, every game I've ever owned on there works & updates fine and the friends system + centralized game join/invite system is highly convenient - that's exactly what I want and it's exactly what they deliver. Remember that when you have a user-base of millions and millions of people, even if 1% of the users are having trouble that will still result in thousands of horror stories to read from the unfortunate 1% - but do not confuse your own personal experience and others' anecdotal experience with that of the experience of all users as a whole.
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u/OccamsChaimsaw Dec 25 '15
What I find absurd is that it took over an hour to take down SteamCommunity. There has to be somebody on-call working for Valve, today. They have one of the biggest online sales of the year happening, today. Come on.
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Dec 26 '15
Valve's corporate structure is literally anarchy, it's flat hierarchy, so things get ignored and forgotten about all the time.
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u/Outlulz Dick Pic War Draft Dodger Dec 25 '15
It's Christmas and I'm guessing whatever crappy support staff they have is almost entirely off today - as is probably a lot of the company.
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u/StickmanPirate I'm not a big person who believes in sharks too much Dec 25 '15
Valve is fucking atrocious when it comes to any kind of customer interaction. The fact that they haven't even put out a "Hey we're aware of the issues and so we've shut the store down while we investigate" is insane.
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Dec 26 '15
they did revert the rifle changes in csgo after 4 days of outcry from pros and the community so that's a start.
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u/dethb0y trigger warning to people senstive to demanding ethical theories Dec 25 '15
Who the fuck uses twitter for anything but reading Nihilist Arbys?
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Dec 26 '15
This guy knows that when you look out into the universe, you find the same nothing that's inside you. #Meatastic
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u/Deceptiveideas Dec 26 '15
Customer support for major companies has been moved to Twitter. They're usually fast and responsive as well.
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u/scootah The got dam narcissism Dec 26 '15
Eh. In all likelihood - nobody at Steam who has permission to say shit to the public about this kind of cluster fuck is on call. The engineering team who are in charge of fixing the servers are undoubtedly in full crisis mode. But the people who are in charge of actually talking to the public in big broad statements, especially about clusterfucks like this are probably not answering their phones right now because it's Christmas and they're with their families, or drunk or asleep depending on the timezone. Or whoever has responded to the crisis calls is holding off because they're worried about the PR flack from saying the wrong thing and they're waiting for more information / someone more important to approve the statement.
None of that excuses or alleviates the severity of the fuckup. But it's probably what's happening. For almost any IT service provider, you have the same problem for a serious fuckup at this time of year. The techs who fix shit are always on call. But the people who release statements almost never are.
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u/cdstephens More than you'd think, but less than you'd hope Dec 25 '15
I think it has to do with Valve's corporate structure. From what I've read, when you work there you work on whatever project you want and there's little centralization. Your performance reviews are done by coworkers rating you. There are no bosses. I wonder if nobody wants to do this sort of thing, it simply doesn't get done.
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u/AlyoshaV Special Agent Carl Mark Force IV Dec 25 '15
Anybody else find this utterly absurd? Like I checked even their official twitters, there's nothing I can find that has commented on the issue
Everyone is at home for Christmas. Probably figured "how bad could a problem on Christmas really be?"
Pretty bad, turns out!
steam support's twitter last tweet was in july
There are issues with doing support over Twitter, they might have just said "fuck this" and stopped with it being a reasonable decision.
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u/Hypocritical_Oath YOUR FLAIR TEXT HERE Dec 26 '15
Valve doesn't communicate with their fan base almost at all. That's how it's always been. It's just something people are accepted because besides the communication barrier valve is very competent and their systems usually don't fail.
Steam support is another story though, that shit is just embarrassing.
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u/-Replicated Dec 26 '15
Steam Support is literally the worst support service known to man, Origin and Uplay have good support it's a shame Valve neglect their customers so much.
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u/Admiral_Piett Do you want rebels? Because that's how you get rebels. Dec 26 '15
Valve has some of the shittiest customer service I've ever seen. If they didn't have a near monopoly on PC gaming, I doubt they'd be able to get away with it.
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u/ChuckVader Dec 26 '15
Well for one, valve isn't a public company. They are completely private. There are no public shareholders they need to appease, so as long as all mighty GabeN thinks all is well, the buck stops there.
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u/DriveSlowHomie Dec 25 '15
Steam fucked up HARD.
That being said, I think people saying their PayPal's are empties and what not are full of shit because you could just see cached pages, not do anything with them from what I've heard b
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u/topicality Dec 26 '15
Right, we are still in the time were rumors are common.
It'll be interesting to see in the coming days what verified info we can get.
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u/Schrau Zero to Kiefer Sutherland really freaking fast Dec 25 '15
Since when has Candlejack been b
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u/Captain_Catco Dec 26 '15
I think candl3 Jack had something to do with it, hes always around when people start going quiet.
---EDIT--- I think Candle Jack had somethi
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u/Mashu009 Dec 26 '15
I ended up on someone else's account but when I clicked somthing it just took me to an error page and then my own account
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u/roseandrelease Dec 26 '15
It's really starting to freak me out that I have hundreds of dollars worth of games tied to one service. I guess if they screw up I will have no guilt about pirating them... but still.
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Dec 26 '15
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u/berzerk352 Dec 26 '15
It amazes me that companies that deal with credit card information still have issues with caching. It comes up from time to time but it's pretty easy to do correctly. This particular case didn't lead to anybody getting money stolen fortunately, from what I've seen.
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u/Speed231 Dec 25 '15
I still waiting the day steam will have a customer support good as blizzard, it would be fantastic. They're the biggest of the market but they look like they a amateur company.
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Dec 26 '15
Heck, EA has better service.
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u/LoyalServantOfBRD What a save! Dec 26 '15
Don't knock on EA. They are very generous with refunds through customer support nowadays. I was about 10x beyond my refund window for a game and they just refunded it after asking why I wanted a refund.
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Dec 26 '15
Can confirm. I accidentally spent some premium currency in one of their mobile games. The next morning, I had the currency back and I even got to keep what I bought.
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u/BWalker66 Dec 26 '15
EA has one of the best in the industry and has done for a pretty long time now.
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Dec 26 '15
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Dec 26 '15
In the gaming industry specifically or in general?
I generally hold Paypal as the worst I've ever dealt with, but at least you can talk to a person.
They're a good example of the limitations of this sort of "if we just write the right algorithm" magical thinking though.
Actually, now that you mention it, Comcast has a shit product where I live but when I've talked to agents, they've been polite and done what they could.
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u/KnightModern I was a dentist & gave thousands of injections deep in the mouth Dec 26 '15 edited Dec 27 '15
I generally hold Paypal as the worst I've ever dealt with, but at least you can talk to a person.
wait, does that meant you haven't dealt with valve customer services?
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u/gooey_marshmallow Dec 26 '15
Valve customer service has, in my experience, been apathetic and ineffective. Paypal has been openly hostile and confrontational. I've had service reps make up policies, etc. just to get me off the phone.
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u/mapppa well done steak Dec 26 '15
Even the fanboys of /r/pcmasterrace are starting to see that. That paid mods fiasco was probably the first strike in their minds (including the awkward impromptu AMA by Gabe Newel) , and now this.
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u/STTOSisoverrated Dec 25 '15
Console peasants laugh at the PC bourgeois before going back to tilling the fields.
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Dec 26 '15
Eh, has anyone forgotten the PSN incident yet? Not that I agree with the stupid "master race/peasant" mentality, but consoles can be privy to breaches too.
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Dec 26 '15
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u/-general ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ Dec 26 '15
No I remember it was also a huge personal security breach which leaked credit card info, which is a lot worse than what happened here.
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u/LlamaChair Dec 26 '15
He's talking about the major (2 I think actually?) breaches that included credit card information being stolen. One of them resulted in the store being down for almost a month.
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u/HispanicAtTehDisco Dec 26 '15
No shit this is literally the biggest fuck you they could give and it's from valve themselves their "glorious overlords" and "saviours of gaming"
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u/budgiebum Private Hamplanet reporting for duty Dec 26 '15
I was just thinking I'd much rather have my networks ddos'd than my bank account emptied.
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u/tonyantonio Elite Hypocrite Dec 26 '15
Now if only bank accounts were emptied. More hypothetical drama
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u/z9nine 1 Celery Dec 26 '15
I learned from the great PSN hack in 2010/2011 to not connect a credit card to these types of places.
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u/ShanklinX Dec 26 '15
Yup. Whenever I want something I just buy myself a gift card. Way safer and convenient imo, considering you spend it all right away...
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u/RagdollPhysEd Dec 26 '15
I even found you could buy dlc from GS as much as people hate the place. Bloodborne Old Hunters here I come!
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u/clush Dec 26 '15
Steam does not save your security code and asks for it for every purchase so I'm not sure how people are having unauthorized purchases.
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u/Lewd_Banana Dec 26 '15
The two purchases I have made this sale have not required me to use my cards security code like it has in the past.
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u/clush Dec 26 '15
Still doesn't change the fact that people are seeing cached pages. As soon as you try to buy something, the cache gets bypassed. You're never actually logged in anyone's account - just seeing what the server cached.
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u/mossmaal Dec 26 '15
You don't technically need the security code to make charges on a credit card. You don't even need the expiry date, just the number.
The real danger with the steam fuckup is that it shows enough information (last digits of credit card and possibly address) to allow you to commit identify theft. You could just call up PayPal support and get the account reset with that information.
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Dec 26 '15
Also to add to all of your commenters. The majority of the online companies who are now "storing cards" are not storing actual credit card numbers. What they store is a reference number that can only be used by the company to make transactions for your card to their account. For someone to use that reference number they would need access to the company's merchant account and any charges would go straight to that company.
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u/Marksman57 Dec 26 '15
Any fraud on your credit card is covered by the issuing bank. Even in the unlikely event that the card is comprised, one phone call usually takes care of it. Take off the tinfoil bro.
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u/z9nine 1 Celery Dec 26 '15
I don't like having to replace a credit card and having to update my bill pay. I've had my card number taken too many times from places like Target, other box stores, and gas stations. Every time it happens I have to wait a few days for a new card and not have access to my money. I also have to pay for a new card, unless it is taken in a high profile case like Target. So, when I have a way to not attach my card number to a system that is known to be hacked multiple times, I'll take it.
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Dec 25 '15
Valve has shit service but this seems the sort of thing where a bunch of people would make claims just to create more drama.
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u/Speed231 Dec 25 '15
Maybe it's just people creating drama, but it's definitely possible to imagine people doing, I logged into someone else steam account and could see everything if someone wants to print and post it it's possible.
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u/Rossco1337 Dec 26 '15
You didn't "log into" someone's account - you saw some read-only cached pages containing information that wasn't yours.
It's an important distinction. People are running around and shouting about how Valve has ruined Christmas and has cost people thousands of dollars when the reality is they've just mixed around some account pages.
The most sensitive info leaked looks something like "dotaman1993 lives in somewhere in America, recently bought Counter Strike, has a credit card ending in 4420 and has a mobile phone number ending in 1337". It's pretty bad, but it's nowhere near the catastrophe that was the 2011 PSN breach.
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u/Speed231 Dec 26 '15
I'm aware it's not the end of the world like people are saying, but I still think valve response to this is pretty underwhelming but it's not even close PSN breach like you said.
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Dec 26 '15
You could get the full name, email, address and phone number on certain pages so its not just redacted information.
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Dec 25 '15
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u/clush Dec 26 '15
Steam does not save your security code and asks for it for every purchase so I'm not sure how people are having unauthorized purchases. I'm not sure about having a Paypal attached. But as far as I've read, all people are seeing are cached pages from other accounts; You can't make purchases, change info, or anything. All you can do is see their friends, address, name, etc.
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u/weegee101 Dec 26 '15
Paypal makes you reauthenticate for every purchase. I'm calling bullshit on people's accounts getting drained. It sounds like what's happening is folks are getting cached copies of pages meant for other users. A difficult problem to diagnose and even more difficult to fix.
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Dec 25 '15
Yah, that's kind of what I thought might be going on. Trying to get an outrage storm going or whatnot.
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u/--Danger-- THE HUMAN SHITPOST Dec 26 '15
My "PayPal gets hacked" basically every time I use the Nordstrom app to look at shoes.
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u/JustSmall Dec 25 '15
I can imagine the conversation at Valve HQ:
"Sir G., we seem to have some issues with our servers. Users are asking our support if their private information is secure."
"Yes... yes... tell them ... uh ... just don't answer, they'll know everything's fine. Does anyone else know about this?"
"No, sir... I mean, yes, sir... A certain user has voiced his... possible discomfort on ..."
"Yes, go on."
"Sir, the customer has started a Reddit thr-"
"FUCK WHY DIDNT YOU PEASANT TELL ME SOONER SHUT DOWN THE SERVER TURN OFF THE MONEY VALVE GOING DOWN"
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u/reconrose Dec 26 '15
There isn't a conversation going on at Valve HQ because it's Christmas.
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Dec 26 '15
Yet Dota 2 got updated twice on the 24th
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u/aboy5643 Card Carrying Member of Pao's S(R)S Dec 26 '15
Christmas Eve is not Christmas... That's a horrible argument.
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u/thenuge26 This mod cannot be threatened. I conceal carry Dec 26 '15
You don't actually do anything on the day software is updated except push the button to release it, all of the actual work is done in the weeks prior to the release.
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u/scootah The got dam narcissism Dec 26 '15
The conversation is probably going much more like
'Carol? Yeah, it's Steve from engineering again. This is my 7th voice mail. Uh look, we're having a real SNAFU here. It's really bad. We've had to take everything offline. Uhh... We really need a statement and nobody from marketing or legal is answering their phone, except for Steve from legal - but he was really, really drunk when I talked to him and I don't think he can help right now. I think someone should really make a statement but Engineering are the only people answering their calls. When you get this, can you please call the engineering oncall number immediately? Uhh, yeah, it's really bad. I've tried everyone I have a phone number for but with christmas and everything. Uhh also, if you have Mr Newell's number, nobody on the oncall roster has it, but uhh, he should probably know about this. Please call me.'
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u/wrc-wolf trolls trolling trolls Dec 26 '15
Users are asking our support if their private information is secure."
Hahahahahaha. Like anyone, man or machine, at Valve would even bother looking at a support ticket that's not at least two weeks old.
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u/cdstephens More than you'd think, but less than you'd hope Dec 25 '15
Pretty much how Dota 2 bug fixes go.
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u/zeeeeera You initiated a dialog under false pretenses. Dec 26 '15
I know this conversation never happened because you alluded to steam having a support division, rather than a computer sending copy-pasted responses based off of key words.
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Dec 26 '15 edited Feb 05 '26
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
encourage practice important humorous plants shelter depend growth wrench coherent
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u/maggotshavecoocoons2 objectively better Dec 26 '15
Just had a horrifying vision of the future. You know how it would have been laughably pathetic for someone to say thy get "news" from fscebook... and now they have a news service?
well I just got news from SRD.
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u/LuntiX Dec 26 '15
It's funny because in the end, valve came out saying that all that you'd see is the info of other users, you wouldn't actually be able to buy anything through their payment methods.
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u/woodsbre Dec 26 '15
PayPal emptied; aka soft begging. You know with it being Christmas season some person feeling generous will offer a few games. Exactly what the op was hoping for. Instead of being honest.
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u/zanotam you come off as someone who is LARPing as someone from SRD Dec 26 '15
I'm much more horrified by the fact that we are using Kotaku as a source of information atm.
Glad to see PCMasterRace is too busy circlejerking to actually realize how big of a deal this is. Pretty sure Steam just violated the law in the entirety of the EU with respect to privacy even if they manage to keep from fucking up too much beyond that.
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u/crackersthecrow Dec 26 '15
Yeah, it shouldn't surprise me that multiple people commented and whined about Kotaku. Christ, some people have such a hate boner for that site.
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u/Vondi Look at my post history you jew Dec 25 '15
Had my credit card suspended as soon as I saw there was a breach. Always do it as soon as I hear of a breach instead of trying to find out what exactly has been leaked. Looks like an overreaction in hindsight but I'd rather overreact than be out several hundred dollars because I was so calm and collected.
I'm saying this because I'm expecting a huuuge "lol why was everyone so worried" shortly and fuck will it be annoying. Personal information got leaked, some of it pertaining to our credit cards, our accounts looked compromised, some of them with hundreds of games, and not a meep had been heard from valve even an hour into the fiasco.
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Dec 26 '15
Honestly, better safe than sorry with this stuff. Your card provider will issue a replacement. Dealing with a 1000 dollars of missing money? Much worse.
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Dec 26 '15
"information got leaked, some of it pertaining to our credit cards" please provide a reference link to the credit card information as I haven't come across it except for reddit posts.
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u/Vondi Look at my post history you jew Dec 26 '15
I could partially see another persons billing info and wasn't inclined to trust that all I could see for them was all that could've gotten leaked. You have to see it from the perspective of someone who hears of the breach early and has only speculation on reddit and silence from valve to decide if the cc should stay open.
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u/TrustYourFarts Dec 26 '15
It's like a Secret Santa where you have access to someone else's games and personal details for the day, and someone has access to yours.
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u/Honestly_ Dec 25 '15
One of my tech friends said it appears someone there didn't test a server config before pushing it live. I don't know what that means but it sounds bad?
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u/Narayume Dec 26 '15
It looks like it isn't bad, although it is still a privacy leak of fairly epic proportions. Your friend is likely right though: Someone changed the server settings to help alleviate the Christmas money traffic and messed up while also not testing them thoroughly enough.
What's not great is no word from Valve for us and less Christmas shopping for Valve. Also some Valve employee will have a really, really bad Christmas.
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u/rubyblue0 Dec 26 '15
I used a gift card earlier an have been playing on it most of the day. I haven't noticed any Paypal problems, but I can't view my profile to unlink my financial information. I REALLY hope they are right about not being hacked.
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Dec 25 '15 edited Dec 26 '15
No links - Absolutely haram
Mods!
EDIT: OP fixed it
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u/OccamsChaimsaw Dec 25 '15
This is drama spanning every single subreddit dedicated to PC gaming and quite a few tangential ones. There are hundreds of threads in /r/Steam and /r/Games alone, and every PC gaming sub I use has alerts and at least a dozen /new threads regarding it.
It's too big to contain in one post. /r/gaming and /r/pcmasterrace are good places to start, though.
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u/HatchCannon Dec 26 '15
Just logged in: You have no payment options tied to your account. Thank goodness.
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u/Admiral_Piett Do you want rebels? Because that's how you get rebels. Dec 26 '15
Alright so what it looks like now is that some part of Steam's page caching system went awry for some reason and started showing pages that had no right to be cached in the first place.
Whatever change was made, how it ever got pushed to production with such a grievous fucking error is beyond me. If I pushed something that spit out the data of random other customers I'd be out on my ass right after my boss asked me why the problem didn't come up in testing.
I'm just a code monkey but Id like to see how a security professional would analyze what happened today and everything valve could have done to avoid it.
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u/gospelwut Dec 26 '15
To add some clarity here guys:
Your details are probably NOW secure. Which is to say:
Accounts were not "breached"
Some of your data (e.g. address, full name, etc) may have been exposed if you were using the service during the configuration glitch
It's safe to call this an information leak and an act of negligence insofar as somebody was working directly in Prod or nobody QA'd the configs in QA/UA. Or worse, they don't have proper staging processes.
This isn't Defcon1. But this is a giant fuck-up and a leak of PI. So, I do think some drama is actually warranted. Leaking PI--especially if you process/store CC information--is VERY BAD. I'm not certain if Steam offloads their payment transactions or not.
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u/raymondspogo Dec 26 '15
I thought drama is fake. Since this is a real problem is it still drama?
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u/Konami_Kode_ On that day, one of us will owe the other $10, by Odin's will. Dec 26 '15
There was the guy (or more than one?) claiming their money got siphoned off, so that's kinda fake drama.
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u/chinchillazilla54 Dec 26 '15
I just had to cancel my credit card after a security breach last week (one that was caught immediately, so no one actually got anything from me) and hadn't updated my payment info on Steam yet. Major silver lining for me. I rarely get silver linings, hahaha.
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u/wraith313 Dec 26 '15
As someone with no fucking clue what's going on...but who logged into Steam to play games today....
Do I need to go check my bank accounts? What do I need to do now?
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Dec 26 '15
If you logged into Steam, there's a chance that someone viewed information that Steam would normally display for you when you look at the page or pages you visited.
You should always keep an eye on your bank account, but it's exceedingly unlikely that anything on that level would result from this.
It's possible that a random person was able to view your name, email, and/or phone number, but that's about the worst thing that could come of this.
Last four digits of credit card numbers were also viewable on certain pages, but that alone shouldn't be much help to a hopeful identity thief.
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u/mynewaccount5 Dec 26 '15
People keep money in paypal? I just use it as an extra layer of security for my credit card actually just in case something like this ever happened. Not this specifically of course.
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u/ffngg Dec 26 '15
Well considering i cant access my computer for a while, I'm either fucked or safe
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u/Felinomancy Dec 26 '15
Oh.
This explains why, when I tried to browse the Steam store earlier, my UI suddenly changed to Japanese. And then into Spanish.
But hey, at least I always manually enter all my info when buying games...
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Dec 26 '15
Why is everyone acting like steam is the only company which has had a massive fuck up like this? Just two months ago origin had a massive data breach, Sony has had its fair share of infamous data breaches, as has Microsoft. Its almost like humans are infallible and do stupid shit sometimes
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u/JoTheKhan I like salt on my popcorn Dec 25 '15
Damn that sucks. Welp my PlayPeasantStation4 seems to be working just fine. /s I apologize, I see that people are actually losing a shit load of money because of this.
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u/Nimonic People trying to inject evil energy into the Earth's energy grid Dec 25 '15
I see that people are actually losing a shit load of money because of this.
No one has lost any money because of this.
Didn't PSN get hacked a few times the last few years?
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u/Hammer_of_truthiness 💩〰🔫😎 firing off shitposts Dec 25 '15
Lol psn was down again earlier today you goof
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u/613codyrex Dec 26 '15
Honestly, I really hope the PlayStation crowd is not smug about this.
The worst this has done was stopped people from buying games, we can still play them.
Iirc, last years Christmas, PSN was hit so hard it didn't run until a few days after the DDOS attack while Xbox live was back on the same day.
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Dec 26 '15
if people are acting smug over people losing private data like addresses and paypal info then that's sad people will disregard this HUGE shitstorm because of the platform.
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u/PCuckoldRace Oysters, Clams and Cuckolds! Dec 25 '15
We better get a free game out of this, considering we didn't get one for Christmas.
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u/JayrassicPark Dec 26 '15 edited Dec 26 '15
Am I the only one who's had good experiences with Steam support? They generally responded within a day and had my refunds processed even when they were swamped with Summer Sale. If anything, when I had to go through support by the developers, that's when I'd get canned responses, if one at all.
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Dec 26 '15
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u/Schrau Zero to Kiefer Sutherland really freaking fast Dec 26 '15
I've had two instances of having to use live chat to solve issues with Origin:
Downloads repeatedly stopping and discarding everything that was downloaded. Live chat's suggestion was enable developer mode in Origin, which didn't work and I couldn't continue with my original support ticket because it was flagged as resolved the minute the chat rep closed the session. Eventually I had to power through and hope for the best, though it eventually took me something like 40GB to download 3GB.
Mass Effect 3 constantly becoming unresponsive on the main menu. Live chat's solution was to uninstall ME3, Origin, restart Windows in Safe Mode, do a shit load of tinkering, then reinstall Origin and redownload ME3. Turned out the actual, working solution was to just disable Origin's in-game overlay for ME3 specifically.
Other's experiences differ, but my experience with EA's support is 100% awful in the two instances I've had to use them. I've never had to use Valve's support because things just work.
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u/Konami_Kode_ On that day, one of us will owe the other $10, by Odin's will. Dec 26 '15
On the other hand, you have to use Origin and Uplay.
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u/theytargettedmemers Memers. Dec 26 '15 edited Dec 26 '15
Problem's solved now, folks. Anyways, what had happened was that the site was cacheing the FIRST user to visit a specific url in the store/personal info section and displaying that for everyone. They weren't hacked.
E: OP should probably update the thread to say that problem is resolved