Yesterday, we learned that
the Epic Store client was copying a Steam user data file called localconfig.vdf. According to Epic, the client stores a local, encrypted version of the file and does nothing with it unless you opt to import your Steam friends, at which point it sends only hashed friend IDs to Epic's servers.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said that this process was a rush job designed in "the early days of Fortnite," and that it's going to be fixed. He also said that the Epic Store doesn't use the Steam API due to Epic's own user privacy concerns, not regarding Steam's API in particular, but because of a "general concern of APIs collecting more data than expected." He pointed to
this article about Facebook data harvesting.
In a statement sent to
Bleeping Computer today, Valve's Doug Lombardi said that the company is "looking into what information the Epic launcher collects from Steam." It sounds like Valve isn't too pleased about the whole thing.
"The Steam Client locally saves data such as the list of games you own, your friends list and saved login tokens (similar to information stored in web browser cookies)," wrote Lombardi. "This is private user data, stored on the user's home machine and is not intended to be used by other programs or uploaded to any 3rd party service.
"Interested users can find localconfig.vdf and other Steam configuration files in their Steam Client’s installation directory and open them in a text editor to see what data is contained in these files. They can also view all data related to their Steam account at:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata."
In other words, Valve doesn't think the Epic Store client should be touching localconfig.vdf at all, and presumably would prefer it if Epic used the Steam API to gather friends lists.
www.pcgamer.com
