Steam Guard Now in Beta

Valve has a new beta test available for users of its digital distribution service, Steam; titled Steam Guard, the beta launched over the weekend and according to co-founder and managing director of Valve, Gabe Newell, offers an extra layer of protection from those who would attempt to steal your account.

It works by having you verify the e-mail address tied to your Steam account, then setting the computer you are logged into as the only computer allowed to access the account. If you want to access your account on another computer, you need to obtain a verification code that will be sent to your e-mail address.

Newell is very confident that this system is secure, he even gave out his user name and password to a crowd at GDC. This writer is not brave enough to do that, I’ll just trust that it works as well as Newell claims it does. Besides, if you want to play something other than Heroes of Might and Magic V, you wouldn’t get much out of stealing my account.

I’m all for extra layers of protection for these sort of services, especially Steam; where a lot of users have dozens, even hundreds of games. Losing all of that would be pretty devastating. The issue I see with this system is that you still need to keep your e-mail account secure, and often times multiple accounts from a user are compromised when they have been key logged.

I like Blizzard Entertainment’s Authenticator for Battle.net 2.0 games and World of Warcraft. Nothing is 100% secure but this seems to be the best security I’ve seen for protecting someone’s online accounts. Blizzard also provides an Android and iOS app which makes the whole process of securing your account just hat much easier.

So, does anyone want to post their Steam credentials in the comment section below? Just make sure first that you are opted into the Steam Guard beta test by going to your account settings from within Steam.