Steam hacked, credit card data accessed

Valve has contacted the Steam user base to confirm that the digital distribution platform has been breached by hackers.

According to the company, intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. The database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information.

Valve boss Gabe Newell said in a statement: “We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating… Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely. 

“While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well. 

“We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn't be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.

“We will reopen the forums as soon as we can. I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologise for the inconvenience.”

Valve took the Steam forums offline “for maintenance” earlier this week after multiple users reported getting redirects to a website called Fkn0wned.com offering "hacking tutorials and tools, porn, free giveaways and much more". Others claimed to have received email spam from Fkn0wned.com, although the site itself denied any responsibility.

The event is the latest in a string of online attacks on game companies this year. Network security has also been found to be wanting at Nintendo, Codemasters, Epic, Square Enix, Bethesda and Sony, among others.