The company revealed today that as part of an update to the Steam client users can select to allow Valve to scan not just the hardware on their PC (it’s PC only at this stage), but the software as well. To do this, it’ll comb through the Programs and Features control panel and list everything it finds.
“The new software component of our survey helps us understand what else our customers are using their PCs to do, and as a result, what features we can deliver or leverage to make Steam and our games better”, Valve says in a statement. “PC users, developers and manufacturers will no doubt also find this information useful, so we plan to publish these results and trends over time. The first set of software survey results will be published among Steam stats at the end of the month.”
Sounds invasive, but remember, these surveys aren’t mandatory.
Thomas Ingram
Friday, July 16, 2010 at 9:04 PMLol I think your parallel with the image was drawn a bit wide hahah.
I think it should generate some quite interesting results, and really it’s not as if your programs are personal information or anything.
Harley Graham
Friday, July 16, 2010 at 9:37 PMyeah I’m never getting a computer with a built-in webcam…
David
Friday, July 16, 2010 at 10:20 PMThat’s not at all true. I can imagine a lot of cases where you might not want to make known which programs you have installed. Of course it’s optional, so you can always make that decision. I expect some bias from people with certain types of software not allowing the survey.
cheese
Saturday, July 17, 2010 at 8:47 AMHopefully the option to select this is very carefully designed so that no person unfortunately selects it without knowing it. As long as it’s optional it’s fine.
Joe Mama
Saturday, July 17, 2010 at 9:15 AMObviously the results will be published as a whole. If only you have Porndialer.exe installed they’re not going to list it.
Roland
Saturday, July 17, 2010 at 12:43 PMMy comp has all osrts of questionable things on it, but I can’t imagine Valve calling the cops on em so sure they can see it all.