Sunday, August 21, 2011

Steam says friend is playing Hello Kitty?

Question

I frequently see that my friends on Steam are playing Hello Kitty: Island Adventure. I know that this is not accurate. Why is Steam reporting that they're playing a game that isn't on Steam? Is Steam lying?

Answer

As Gnoupi said, it's possible to report any game you want to play as a non-Steam game.

In this case, it's a joke reference to the episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" of South Park, in which Butters prefers Hello Kitty Island Adventure over World of Warcraft.

As far as I know no such game exists.

By the way, there's a similar exploit where it is possible to show yourself playing a game which you have pre-loaded, but is not yet released, by using a utility that reports the AppID to Steam. This means you can't even trust the regular in-game titles either. I've been known to "play" Left 4 Dead 2 and Portal 2 prior to its release.

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