Steam is working on allowing you to mark a game as private and hide it from your friends (both you and Valve knows why)

I look forward to browsing by "games most often marked private".

The more control over your privacy the better.
I was once (long ago) sick on Monday and my employer called me and told me that I should be able to come to work when I was able to play World of Warcraft on Sunday, because he looked my character up in the armory and saw me getting a boss kill or something.
I was sick, because I had my wisdom teeth removed on Monday morning....
People can get in all kinds of trouble because of their gaming habits. A game critical of religion or religious, a game about sexuality and/or gender, a political game about dictatorship or capitalism or unionizing. A historical game about something your country doesn't want you to know or a game that mentions Tian'anmen and Winnie-Puh. A game from a Russian developer that fled Russia when the war against Ukraine started and you are a gamer in Russia who wants to play it.
Good if Steam allows more control over our privacy, it took them long enough.
- told me that I should be able to come to work when I was able to play World of Warcraft
  From your name I assume you are German. In that case your employer could suck it, even if you played on Monday. You can do whatever the fuck you want if it doesn't conflict with you getting better. So if the doctor advises to stay in bed and sleep and you run around town for fun you could rightfully get in trouble. But if you have a broken leg you might not be fit for (your particular) work but could of course still play computer games. If you are on sick leave for mental problems you could even go on vacation because that might even benefit your mental health.
  
  go a step further who cares if hes out and about while sick your employer has you for the time youre working no more and usually less. the employer can suck a dick, your situation is probably different but if my boss was like "yo i see u gaming come to work", id quit on the spot.
  always work the quality of your wage and remember that you arent paid enough.

I'm genuinely surprised this wasn't a thing already. I've never looked for such a thing though because i have no friends to hide from.
- lmao sadge

So they can't see my 1.5 million hours on factorio?
- You spent 62,500 days or 171.2 years playing factorio? Sounds like you’re close to ready for your first play through after you finish the tutorial!
  
  Really glad someone did the math
  
  he's almost got his early factory running in bobangels!
  
  The earliest date I can find on the wiki is for 03 May 2013, so we'll be optimistic even though that the kickstarter ended on March 2013.
  The maximum hours you could play if the game was running 24/7 since then is: 92,184.
  This is just a fun math fact.
- My coworker asked to be Steam friends.
  And I don't want them to know how many hours I have in Vampire Survivor.
- So you beat space exploration, right?
  ...right?
  
  Space exploration? Is that a thing I wasn't aware of or that I purposefully avoided because I sank too much time into factorio
- thats about how long it took me to get the realistic reactor mod to work with my BP
  I made a post on reddit a few years back on the off chance anyone wants to know more about it. I'd repost on lemmy but its looooooong
- The real reason here

I on the other hand, make full use of the share widgets on porn sites. Goddammit you'll know when I bust.
- Which hand exactly?
  
  Advertisers know.

I actually wait until most of my friends are online to start playing Orc Massage. Why would I hide that?
- I doubt you do that. I bet you don't even have the orc massage game

I am proud of my achievements in Genital Jousting
- Introducing that one to new players on game night is always a pleasure.
- I love to gift the "Shower with your dad simulator" to friends, just because.
- And it’s steam deck verified!

This will make me more likely to buy certain games, absolutely. And it's really not that I feel ashamed or whatever about them, but more like, I know some people are judgey, and I'd rather not have them in the know lmao. Also work/professional stuff.
- Yeah, I can see that. Your friends should not have to know if you like tsunderes unless you want to tell them.
- Why would anyone use Steam accounts for professional stuff?

Fuck yeah, now I can enjoy Sex with Hitler 2 in peace
(For the love of God please know this is a joke)
- Remove the second line no balls
  
  Hitler wouldn't have sex with someone with more balls than him
- Part 2 has been released? Oh boy!

I've had my whole profile on private for years, lmao.
- Same. I don't even like taking myself off invis the minute or so it takes for my friends to see me and join me in-game.

The surfeit of waifu and other porn and porn-like games is surprising when you start digging through what’s on sale.
Anybody ever bought one of these and care to share what the attraction is?
- Huniepop is just a legitimately decent game.
  Also, Deep Space Waifu was a gift and I'm keeping it
  
  Huniepop is awesome. One of the best Match 3 games I've ever played with interesting game mechanics you don't see in most Match 3s. The nudie pictures don't hurt either, but truthfully, it would still be a great game even without them.
- Anybody ever bought one of these and care to share what the attraction is?
  It's interactive porn with a budget.
  
  Ok, so do some game mechanic to get the character’s clothes off in some way, I get that…but what’s the “budget” part?
- I recently got Sex Chess because it's called Sex Chess.
  Haven't played it yet.
  
  Now I really want to know what the sexual equivalent of en passant would be.
- I gifted my friend a few, I remember one of them was Sex With Hitler. Anyway we played them drunk at a LAN party and it was a good laugh. Didn't find it arousing but no judgement here, people like some weird stuff and that's fine
- Chick Wars was kind of fun as a pvp card game, the sex stuff was whatever
  For me the appeal was the meme of playing it and laughing with friends
- AVN fan here, it's CYOA erotica with nice graphics. If reading erotica vs watching porn doesn't appeal to you at all then I'd imagine most AVNs wouldn't appeal to you either?
- The last sovereign is one of the best RPG maker games made. It just happens to have lewd shit as an actual world building feature. Highly recommend, it's free on steam btw.

Now my friends won't know I played ahead of the party in Baldurs Gate so I am get loot faster.

Took them long enough.

This would have been nice to know before I made my burner profile. lol

It's too late for me. They already know.

This would have saved me a lot of drama back when Hogwarts Legacy came out
- Okay but don't fund the terf.
  
  I wasn't funding a transphobic piece of shit, I was funding Avalanche Studios. They did good work on Disney Infinity and later they did good work on Hogwarts.
  Sides JK Rowling made more from ticket sales today from Universal Studio then she will from the lifetime sales of this game.

Finally, I had to just nuke all my share status features lol.

- Coward. Boot up huniepop and send your most introverted friend a game invite

But my friends only message me when I'm in the middle of a boss fight in Nekopara.

This is a great feature I wish we had earlier.

come on man, just let me wank to VR porn in peace

Wouldn't mind having it hidden in my own library. Plenty of games I'd rather not know existed. (Not counting removing then from my library, I bought them, maybe someone will want to play them some day)
- You can already hide games in your library from the right click menu.
- You can already hide them in your library, it's in the right click menu, you can find them by searching for the title, or just typing the first letter of any game title and scrolling all the way down and opening your whole hidden folder. I wish they'd add slightly more features to the library sorting though. Folders would be nice.

Now I can finally hide all of those hours I spent playing Farming Simulator! Every 100 hours crossed just makes the guilty pleasure feel more guilty when I admit it.
- Factorio. Which is why I am up far past my bedtime...

I can't think of a reason why I would want to hide a game. What am I missing?
- You're either a total cinnamon roll or a proud deviant.
  
  Maybe they're a Cinnamon Deviant cross class build.
  
  When did cinnamon roll come to mean naive?
- They have very explicit sexually themed video games. And my assumption is that this feature will allow you or I to continue to hide our fetishes from our friends and families.
  
  I didn't know this. I guess to me, playing a game is not the same activity as enjoying porn. But now I know. Thanks.
- A few years ago I bought a Humble Bundle with a bunch of visual novels because people on Reddit were raving about the game Root Double. However, the bundle also came with a few adult games. I'd like to not have friends and coworkers ask why there's a loli catgirl game in my library.
  
  As long as it has 0 hours played, youre in the clear for an excuse..
  If you launch it however....
- Steam is full of anime porn games.
  For a long time there wasn't even a way to filter them meaningfully, as porn and gore were in the same category. So you either had the default filter and couldn't see some of the most violent games, or you turned the filter off and every listing turned into 90% porn games. I think they realized that and now have separate categories for "adult because gory" and "tits".
- let's just say that steam has a section of games distinctly not aimed at children.
- Hentai or porn games.
  No one needs to know I'm playing HunnyPop BeastLover 3
  
  Yikes. BeastLover 2 was peak lore. Story really went downhill with 3. Id be embarrassed too.
- Think visual novels but the visuals are maybe something you wouldn't want your parents to see, unless they're freak nasty.
- I haven't seen anyone else mention the reason why I actually want this feature.
  I want to be able to hide the non-games/utilities so that it doesn't say I'm constantly playing things like blender, fpsvr, etc.
- There's a lot of AO games that seem interesting.
  But can't buy.
- If you know a friend would be offended/make fun/whatever because they see a game in your library.
  Yes, its that persons problem, but sometimes putting up with them is a worse alternative than just being able to hide a game from them.
- My fiancé download a humble bundle of cute and cozy games on my account instead of making her own. It’s humiliating to have cat cafe and witchy kitchen games on there next to Doom.
  
  It's humiliating that you think that.
  
  Oh no! My toxic masculinity!
  
  Lol, embrace it. Add a few more random free ones to keep people guessing
  
  The Doom Guy went to war with the forces of hell over the death of his pet rabbit. He was willing to let it be after escaping in Ep3 but he went scorched fucking earth after they killed his Daisy.
  And, regardless of how you reconcile the timelines, The Doom Slayer is actively hallucinating his pet rabbit because he still cannot get over her loss.
  So yeah. That sounds like a you problem. Because even the most hardcore ultraviolent mass murderer of all FPS protagonists cherishes the love of a cute little bunny rabbit.
  Source: Fuck Fandom, but https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Daisy
  
  You should dump her, she’s definitely got cooties

I just have a second username with no friends on it for my Being a DIK type games.

Now if they could also let me use my own api key to access my own profile without having to make it public. Or maybe just a sane Openid Connect implementation that actually does anything.