Steam users who want to share a link to The Pirate Bay from the built-in chat client will be disappointed, as mentions of the popular torrent site are being censored. Links to various torrent and file-sharing sites are actively stripped from discussions, presumably because Valve doesn't appreciate some of the content that's shared through the site.

With millions of active users Steam is not just a game distribution platform, but also a social network and a communication tool.

Many people use Steam’s instant messaging tool for chats with friends. About games of course, but also about lots of other stuff.

Interestingly, it appears that Steam doesn’t want its users to mention certain topics, piracy included. When one user tried to post a link to the notorious torrent site The Pirate Bay this week, Steam actively censored the message.

Instead of the link the user on the other end saw {LINK REMOVED} in the chat window, as illustrated below.

TF tested some more domains to check if this was merely a one-off incident. We discovered that the same also happens to another torrent site, Torrentz, while the URL of the KickassTorrents website comes through without any issues.

{LINK REMOVED}



The screenshot below shows what the same conversation looks like from the other side.

Please note that the sender of a censored URL doesn’t get any notification that their link has been censored – only the receiving party sees the “link removed” mention.

Same conversation from the other side



Further tests showed that in addition to The Pirate Bay and Torrentz, links to the file-hosting service 4shared are also being removed from Steam conversations.

It’s unclear why Steam is censoring these particular links. TorrentFreak contacted Valve to find out more about the disappearing chats, but at the time of publication we have yet to receive a response.

Since all the censored sites are frequently associated with copyright infringement, it could be that piracy concerns are among the reasons for the links being censored. However, Steam is also known to remove certain URLs to prevent malware and viruses from spreading.

What’s perhaps even more worrying than a link or two being removed, is that Steam is actively monitoring everything that’s said in private conversations between users. This is also reflected in the privacy policy.

“Any information that is disclosed in chat, forums or bulletin boards should be considered public information,” Steam’s agreement reads.

This is not the first time that Steam’s link removal policy has been brought up. Previously we reported that chats mentioning the old Kickasstorrents domain Kickass.to, were also removed from chats.