Good news for anyone who's spent the last six years in a cold sweat, veins pulsing in their forehead as their hand hovers over the purchase button on the Steam page for Hentai Backend Developer 4: that feature that lets you hide all your most shameful games from your Steam library is finally out of beta.
We first caught wind that Steam was going to add a Mark as Private option to your library back in November last year, and Valve put the feature into beta in December. It works simply enough: just right-click a game in your library, go down to Manage, then hit Mark as Private (not "Hide this game," which just obscures an entry from your list of games but keeps it viewable on your profile and when you play it). Boom, suddenly you can accept that pending friend request from your local vicar without fear.
While the ability to stick a game under your proverbial mattress is the obvious headline item, the update actually comes as part of a suite of new additions to Steam's purchasing experience. For instance, you can now gift a game to multiple friends all at once and your shopping cart will follow you across devices. You can also mark a game as private right there when you buy it: handy if you might otherwise forget to mark it later while you're overcome with, uh, emotion.
If, like me, you share your Steam library using the platform's family sharing functionality, you're probably wondering if marking a game as private impacts that. After some testing, I can confirm that it does. Games I marked as private in my own library didn't appear in the games lists of people I share with. Your private games are just for you. And god, to whom you will one day have to justify your purchases.
Frankly, it's a little baffling to me that this isn't how Steam has worked since it started accepting adult games six years ago. Maybe Valve is just even more easygoing and libertarian than I previously thought possible, but I would have guessed that "we should let people properly hide their games" would be the immediate follow-up thought after "we should start selling porn games."
Anyway, here's our list of the best sex games to play in 2024. Just, you know, if you're curious.
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