Valve Unveils Steam Guard

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Valve has just announced Steam Guard, a new feature that allows users to link management of their account to a specific PC. Here's a quote from today's press release:

Valve announced today a new Steam and Steamworks feature called Steam Guard, which gives users greatly increased account security. Steam Guard allows users to link management of their account to a specific PC. Attempts to modify or change account settings by any other PC won't be possible without the user's approval.

Steam Guard will take advantage of upcoming Intel® Identity Protection Technology (Intel® IPT), an encrypted, hardware-based feature available with the new 2nd Generation Intel® Core and Intel® CoreT vPro processors. IPT generates a new numerical password every 30 seconds, integrating into the processor functionality that previously required a separate card or key fob. Users will also be notified if any PCs other than those authorized by them attempt to log into or modify their account settings.
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Nice move. With as much money as I have locked into my Steam account at this point I welcome any enhanced security.
 
The weak point is obvious. The "reset linked PC" will have to be an option incase your mobo goes up in smoke. Which means the attack vector will be changed to utilize that feature, just like the "reset password" currently is. The security system is now only as secure as the security on this new form of reset password option will be.
 
My only question is, will this turn into yet another form of copy protection ?
 
What happens if my computer eats itself and I have to rebuild it with a new CPU? Will my account management remain forever locked to a CPU that no longer exists?

Also what is meant by "without the user's approval" since basically that's what a username/password does as well right?
 
Wow, not like you could have locked it into your nic's MAC address all these years. Don't need all this bullshit laid out here.
 
How about, No.

How hard is it to make a system where the user makes a user name and a 8-16 digit length password, if the user fails to log in 3 times it locks the account for 30 mins and emails the accounts email that something odd is going on and gives the owner a chance to lock/unlock the account etc. Or go another rout like Blizzard did with the Authenticator, very hard to crack, the only weak link left is Bliz internal.
 
Why do I get the feeling this is the first step to linking game licenses to a single PC?
 
limitedaccess said:
Why do I get the feeling this is the first step to linking game licenses to a single PC?
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You understand the show.

Steam Guard is BULLSHIT PR Red Herring cover up bullshit. Yeah, I said bullshit twice, because the bullshit is strong with this one.
 
Steam is getting greedy? why would it turn against its fans like that. especially when things are good now for them.
 
what is hard is that the convenience and pricing of steam is great.... i have bought all my games in the last 4 years on steam

what about people with AMD or other non vPro CPUs?
 
I stopped buying games from Steam when some douchebag CS:S server owner accused me of cheating and Valve locked out my account. Yay for losing about $500 worth of games. Actually, I didn't lose them. The account is still there. But I can't play any of them online. So what's the point. Valve wouldn't work with me at all either.

I can see this being the same thing. You fry your PC and build a new one and Valve says "tough titty little kiddy. Re-buy all your games under a new account"
 
I'll pass, thanks. I can just see, 'you've attemped to login to your steam account from a non verified machine too many times, you = SOL'
 
We better be able to opt out of this, otherwise this is bad, very bad.
If people really want something like this, I think an authenticator token is a much better idea.
 
Some excellent sensationalism in this thread. I would call it "astounding", but for the most part sensationalism is par for the course around here, so I'll simply call it "business as usual".
 
ya you guys over react far to much. first it is optional , second it is for management only.

lets hope they allow some sort of authenticator function too.
 
Kyle...

I am with you 100% on this. I am even against INTEL! For sticking this in processors... Remember a few years ago when it came out that all printers print a unique series of dots so you can track who prints ANYTHING! And then they claimed it was some lame security feature?

I really dont like when technology giants quietly slip in help in locking down content, tracking us without our knowledge.

I agree, this is about locking content to one PC.... Now maybe I am the only one that feels this way, but when I buy something, I should OWN it. Take Windows or anything else... I really don't believe I should only be able to use it on ONE PC? Thats like saying oh, you can buy this blu-ray, but only watch it on ONE device... and we all know there are steps in that direction...

It reminds me of a pic I saw one time... It was a guy saying... When I buy a DVD I have to tear through nearly invulnrable plastic to keep it safe. Watch an introduction that basically says it does not trust me and I am a theif, here is your punishiment if you try. 5 minutes of other crap I can no longer skip through. Then be reminded once again of how bad piracy is....

Then at the bottom it had a quote... "So I can put up with all that crap, or pirate it myself... Hmmm... easy choice."


If companies put so many lockdowns on their products... it gives people MORE insentive to pirate! I want to support good companies that have GOOD security policies and good product! I WILL NEVER EVER pirate anything from blizzard EVER! They are awesome! I have always loved the starcraft/warcraft series!

I am not saying I have pirated anything else.... But I am saying I NEVER would from them. Some of the BS these other companies are doing... is only going to end up promoting "piratism"


O yeah.... This back to original topic... THIS IS SO NOT ABOUT SECURITY AND SO ABOUT LOCKING DOWN CONTENT!

"Quote:
Originally Posted by limitedaccess
Why do I get the feeling this is the first step to linking game licenses to a single PC?


You understand the show.

Steam Guard is BULLSHIT PR Red Herring cover up bullshit. Yeah, I said bullshit twice, because the bullshit is strong with this one. "
 
So, some thing on my computer will "protect" my content.

What if I'm using my computer in my son's room?
What if my daughter wants to play L4D from my account when I'm not on Steam?

Smells like valve is moving toward one account-one machine.
Gone is the access from anywhere?

Sucktastic.
 
HydroBudz said:
I stopped buying games from Steam when some douchebag CS:S server owner accused me of cheating and Valve locked out my account. Yay for losing about $500 worth of games. Actually, I didn't lose them. The account is still there. But I can't play any of them online. So what's the point. Valve wouldn't work with me at all either.
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That is why you link only 1 game to an account. Keeps all of your games isolated and you can sell them. ;)
 
As long as this "security feature" remains optional it isn't anything to get too worried about. If/when Valve starts talking about making it mandatory is when we really have to be concerned. If they don't allow publishers access to it to be usable as a DRM device it should never become a real problem.
 
bbordwell said:
I'm not sure about windows but on Linux you can fake a MAC address very easily.
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Its easily faked on Windows as well. MAC filtering is the absolute worst way to secure anything. You might as well just say "Come take my shit off my network please!" even WEP is better.
 
magoo said:
So, some thing on my computer will "protect" my content. Sucktastic.
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If you want it to, and if you have a processor that supports IPT. If you don't want it to, don't enable it.
 
phide said:
If you want it to, and if you have a processor that supports IPT. If you don't want it to, don't enable it.
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How can you be so calm? The apocalypse is upon us! Valve is trying to ruin our internets, they know our thoughts, THE SKY IS FALLING!
 
This is another thing that people are freaking out about that seems to me like no big deal. Unless Valve is planning on forcing its users to install Intel CPUs, this will never have anything to do with your games. It's getting paid by Intel to utilize a technology Intel wants to license to as many people as possible.

It's a giant advertisement, not an attack on your privacy, people. Wake up and smell the FUD.
(Sorry, that means you, Capt. Kyle)
 
magoo said:
So, some thing on my computer will "protect" my content.

What if I'm using my computer in my son's room?
What if my daughter wants to play L4D from my account when I'm not on Steam?

Smells like valve is moving toward one account-one machine.
Gone is the access from anywhere?

Sucktastic.
Click to expand...
activity.png


My wireless router gives me the option to prevent access to the administrative console wirelessly. Does that mean its wireless functionality doesn't work?
 
HydroBudz said:
I stopped buying games from Steam when some douchebag CS:S server owner accused me of cheating and Valve locked out my account. Yay for losing about $500 worth of games. Actually, I didn't lose them. The account is still there. But I can't play any of them online. So what's the point. Valve wouldn't work with me at all either.

I can see this being the same thing. You fry your PC and build a new one and Valve says "tough titty little kiddy. Re-buy all your games under a new account"
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That's not how VAC/Steam works... if you were banned - it's because VAC's automated system detected cheats in use under your account, not because someone claimed you were cheating. Also, if you were banned from CSS, you were only banned from online play in source engine based games, VAC bans by engine, not the entire account. Also, if it was your first offense, it would only be banned from VAC secured servers for one year. You can still play any HL1, or Source2 engine game, or any third party engine online, and you can play source engine games in non VAC secured servers.

Again, after one year, the ban is lifted, unless you're caught cheating again.
 
Derangel said:
Its easily faked on Windows as well. MAC filtering is the absolute worst way to secure anything. You might as well just say "Come take my shit off my network please!" even WEP is better.
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Yeah MAC wouldn't do shit for this kind of thing. Two interfaces can have the same MAC address so long as they are sufficiently separate on the network. (I.e. not sitting on the same LAN, for example.) It's not a reliable unique finger print.

As far as this technology goes. Fuck yeah. Two-factor authentication is awesome, and this wouldn't involve some retarded keychain dongle that dies constantly or falls into my beer.

As far as DRM goes, who the hell cares? This isn't any different than Ye Olde Limited Activations, except more reliable. They can already restrict you to one machine if they wanted to! This doesn't give them any ability they don't already have.
 
I'm not quite sure what all the negative posts are about. It doesn't say you can't USE the account on another pc, it prevents other people from making CHANGES to your account from an unauthorized PC.
The new feature will allow users to link account management options to a specific machine; an extra measure to prevent unauthorised access
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If you don't like it, or you actually SELL your PC games, create a steam account for every game you have, or even better, JUST DON'T USE IT. It is purely for your account security. Stop reading more into it than what is there.

The only worrisome part is that it will be available to third parties, but even then, I can't see how preventing say, someone from logging into my LOTR account and changing stuff in it is bad.

Shango
 
HydroBudz said:
I stopped buying games from Steam when some douchebag CS:S server owner accused me of cheating and Valve locked out my account. Yay for losing about $500 worth of games. Actually, I didn't lose them. The account is still there. But I can't play any of them online. So what's the point. Valve wouldn't work with me at all either.

I can see this being the same thing. You fry your PC and build a new one and Valve says "tough titty little kiddy. Re-buy all your games under a new account"
Click to expand...

That is not how VAC works.

Your ban may have been because of a false-positive, sure, but the probability of that is pretty low imo. If you were in fact innocent and Valve refused to work with you that sucks and you have my sympathy, but Valve knows what they're doing.

There's a more in-depth article on the Steam support pages but it appears to be unlinkable here.
 
NKDietrich said:
Yeah MAC wouldn't do shit for this kind of thing. Two interfaces can have the same MAC address so long as they are sufficiently separate on the network. (I.e. not sitting on the same LAN, for example.) It's not a reliable unique finger print.

As far as this technology goes. Fuck yeah. Two-factor authentication is awesome, and this wouldn't involve some retarded keychain dongle that dies constantly or falls into my beer.

As far as DRM goes, who the hell cares? This isn't any different than Ye Olde Limited Activations, except more reliable. They can already restrict you to one machine if they wanted to! This doesn't give them any ability they don't already have.
Click to expand...

Don't drink beer then. :p I have the authenticator tied to my iPad. No chance of that falling into a drink and no need to order a little authenticator. My brother and his wife use their phones.
 
There seems to be a tremendous amount of fail logic in this thread.

By definition, if the feature relies on an Intel specific technology, they can't make it mandatory. If they did, they'd have to ship you an Intel CPU along with the roll-out of the feature.

I just don't see why everyone is getting so worked up. Obviously Valve has an incentive in opening doors to your purchased content, not closing them. They recently announced their feature for making the Steam UI work on TVs. Clearly that's a move towards getting Steam accessible from multiple devices within the house (i.e. the living room in addition to your gaming PC), not locking it down to one.

Also keep in mind that even iTunes DRM m4p files allow you to have music on 5 PCs at once. Even though I personally hate protected content, let's admit that those 5 activations are probably more than enough to handle 99% of people's use cases. Now do you really think that Valve would be more restrictive with content than Apple?!

So many rational points say "No, you guys are just being paranoid."
 
aaronearles said:
That's not how VAC/Steam works... if you were banned - it's because VAC's automated system detected cheats in use under your account, not because someone claimed you were cheating. Also, if you were banned from CSS, you were only banned from online play in source engine based games, VAC bans by engine, not the entire account. Also, if it was your first offense, it would only be banned from VAC secured servers for one year. You can still play any HL1, or Source2 engine game, or any third party engine online, and you can play source engine games in non VAC secured servers.

Again, after one year, the ban is lifted, unless you're caught cheating again.
Click to expand...

You and your facts, how the hell did you get on to the internet, not to mention in a forum on the net? :D
 
For everyone getting up in arms over this-

Kotaku said:
Steam Guard is a security technology that locks account modification to a single computer. Users will still be able to access Steam and play games they've already purchased from anywhere, but any major changes to the account must be done through the authorized machine.
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So you can still log in from anywhere and play your games just like you've always done, but if you want to make major changes to the account (password reset, credit card info, address, contact info, etc), you'll have to make it from the authorized machine.

And I imagine if for some reason, the authorized machine gets hosed, they have steps to prove that you are who you say you are.
 
The question is, where does this journey lead us eventually. I for one don't have a whole lot of trust in any company these days. Hey, they earned it. I've come to be much more curious about where things are going, not necessarily where they are.

Shango said:
I'm not quite sure what all the negative posts are about. It doesn't say you can't USE the account on another pc, it prevents other people from making CHANGES to your account from an unauthorized PC.

If you don't like it, or you actually SELL your PC games, create a steam account for every game you have, or even better, JUST DON'T USE IT. It is purely for your account security. Stop reading more into it than what is there.

The only worrisome part is that it will be available to third parties, but even then, I can't see how preventing say, someone from logging into my LOTR account and changing stuff in it is bad.

Shango
Click to expand...
 
TechLarry said:
The question is, where does this journey lead us eventually. I for one don't have a whole lot of trust in any company these days. Hey, they earned it. I've come to be much more curious about where things are going, not necessarily where they are.
Click to expand...

I don't know if the actions of some companies justifies a distrust of ALL companies. Especially Valve which has been one of the few companies to "do no evil." I mean they are the company that not only made a drm scheme palatable, but enabling for the end user. They put out good, quality games that are, largely, worth the price they charge, and are released bug-free.
And if only for the ridiculous amounts of free stuff to TF2 customers, they should have garners SOME amount of respect and faith from the community. I, for one, enjoy their service and products, and don's see this as an issue AT ALL.
 
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