Embarrassed about a game you're buying on Steam? You can now hide purchases from prying eyes

Steam users who are buying games they'd rather not let anyone else know about can now hide such purchases.

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You can make games private when purchasing them, or at a later date (Image Credit: Valve)

Valve has introduced a new capability in beta whereby Steam users can choose a new option at checkout - 'For my account: private.'

As the name suggests, when this choice is made, the game is purchased, but not shown publicly.

No one will be able to see what you've bought, not your friends or anyone else, and indeed the game will be kept off status updates and suchlike.

Valve tells us: "Starting today you'll be able to mark specific games as private and they'll disappear from anywhere they'd be viewed by someone other than you. That includes: your ownership, in-game status, playtime, and activity in that game. This additional control allows you to keep most of your Steam Library visible to your friends, so they can see what you are playing and join in, yet also keep a few of those games just to yourself."

Games can also be marked private after purchase, under the settings for your games library.

There are a couple of other new features in the latest Steam beta client, too, one of which is that your shopping cart will now be synced across all devices.

A change to inline gifting also makes it possible to buy multiple gifts for many friends (and including yourself) in just one transaction, rather than having to make multiple separate purchases.

These are all useful tweaks, but as noted they're still in testing, though it won't be long before they make their way to the release version of the Steam client, no doubt.