Valve’s upping the ante when it comes to security for its topnotch service, by announcing a brand new protection system dubbed “Steam Guard”. PR after the break.
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® CoreT and Intel® CoreT vProT 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.
Steam Guard is available to third parties to incorporate into their own
applications through Steamworks.
“Account phishing and hijacking are our #1 support issues,” said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. “With Intel’s IPT and Steam Guard, we’ve taken a big step towards giving customers the account security they need as they purchase more and more digital goods.”
“We expect to see widespread adoption of hardware-based security like Intel IPT by other service providers,” said Doug Lombardi, Valve’s Vice President of Marketing. “If as a customer you are buying movies, music, games, or digital goods, you want to know that they are more secure than your physical goods.”
“With over 30 million accounts worldwide, Steam is an ideal platform for Intel IPT,” said George Thangadurai, General Manager of PC Client Services at Intel.
“Those running Steam are investing in a robust digital collection of PC games. By adding hardware based protection to these investments, we hope to bolster the amazing success of platforms
such as Steam.”
Via Press Release.
cool.
only thing i hate about steam is whenever i download a update it tells me the update is 4GBs.
does not matter how big the update is, which game its for, it always says 4GBs/8GBs downloaded.
O, and their servers are DEAD slow!
I downloaded the new driver from nvidia last night, got 2.8MBs/S.
through steam im lucky if i get 50KB/S!
downloading things through steam takes freaking forever, took me 4 hours the other day just to update just cause 2!
would not matter if you did not need the updates, but no updates, no game.
so you have no choice but sit there and wait for the stupid thing to crawl to the finish line.
I’m really warming up to steam.
only reason why i dont play all my games on the PC is i end up spending more time getting them to work then i do playing them!
bought darksiders the other day and spend 4 hours updating the dam game, by the time it was done it was 2 in the morning and i went to bed.
same thing happened last night, i finished bulletstorm so i thought id play a little of BFBC2, sat there for 3 hours downloading the latest update then played it for a hour then went to bed.
its ridiculous, your not paying to play the games, your paying to sit there and watch them update!
Yeah, PC gaming could be an expensive habit.
not the expenses thats not too bad, its the crappy support!
every time i want to play one of my PC games i have to sit there for several hours to download the update.
then theres the unorganized nature of Nvidia, bulletstorms been out for 12 days now and they still have not given us the 3D drivers for it!
Support is not too good that’s true.