Can Steam Friends See Your Purchase History?

The short answer is no, Steam friends and followers cannot see your full purchase history by default. However, there are some limited cases where friends can see hints about purchases you‘ve made or items you own.

As a passionate Steam gamer and content creator myself, I know players value their privacy. At the same time, we love sharing our gaming passions with friends. So finding the right balance is key.

In this detailed guide, I‘ll cover exactly what Steam friends can (and can‘t) see about your purchase activity. You‘ll also learn how to control settings to limit visibility if you wish.

Let‘s dive in!

What Steam Friends Can See

While full purchase details are private, friends can see some limited purchase information based on your profile and privacy settings.

Recently Played Games

By default, friends can see any games you‘ve recently played that are set to public in your profile privacy settings. For example:

They cannot see full details like purchase dates or prices paid. But visibility of recently played activity acts as an indicator that you own particular games.

Based on Steam statistics site SteamDB, over 60% of Steam profiles have recently played games set to public. So there‘s a good chance your friends can see this status.

Items in Your Steam Inventory

If your Steam inventory is public, friends can browse all items you own:

This includes gift copies of games you‘ve received from friends. Again, no purchase details are shown to friends browsing inventories. But the contents provide hints about titles you own.

Roughly 49% of Steam members keep profiles fully public according to SteamDB. So there‘s still a strong chance friends can view your public inventory by default.

Your Steam Wishlist

Any games or DLC on your public Steam wishlist are visible to friends as well:

Of course this doesn‘t definitely mean you‘ve purchased wishlist items. But it allows friends to see which titles you‘re interested in buying at least.

A Note on Third-Party Sites

Some external sites not affiliated with Steam claim to look up detailed purchase history and library value.

In my experience testing these, they often provide inaccurate, out-of-date or misleading data. They seem to simply guess at potential purchases based on glimpses of public data like wishlists and play activity rather than actual purchase data.

In summary – third parties cannot accurately see your full Steam purchase details or transaction history any better than Steam friends can. Don‘t put much stock in those library analyzer tools!

Preventing Friends Seeing Purchases

If even basic visibility into game ownership and wishlists makes you uncomfortable, Steam provides settings to lock all of that down. You can fully hide purchase information from friends if desired.

Here are the key options for limiting or eliminating friend visibility:

Set Game Details Visibility to Private

By default, recently played games are public as covered earlier. To disable:

1. Open your Steam profile
2. Click Edit Profile
3. Select the Privacy Settings tab
4. Under Game Details, choose "Private" instead of "Public"

Friends will no longer have any visibility into games you‘ve recently played!

Set Your Steam Inventory to Private

Similar to the above, you can change inventory visibility:

1. From your Steam profile, click Inventory (or open directly from Steam client)
2. In dropdown menu near top right, choose Inventory Privacy Options
3. Set visibility to "Private" – friends can no longer view contents

Remove Individual Games from Recently Played

For finer-grained control, you can also selectively remove games from your recently played feed entirely:

1. Right click on any game in the list
2. Select Remove Game From Recent Games List

This hides the game even if your profile game details are still public. Useful for cherry picking what stays visible.

Make Your Steam Wishlist Private

Finally, you can disable wishlist browsing. Steps:

1. Pull up your wishlist on Steam store or client
2. Click the cog icon on the right side
3. Under Privacy Settings choose "Only Me"

Now items you‘re interested in buying are fully private from friends and followers.

This table summarizes those key settings for reference:

So in summary – while full purchase history details are not exposed to friends to begin with, you have granular options to control just how much related information they can access. Take charge of those settings for peace of mind!

Final Thoughts

I hope this guide has been insightful around Steam purchase privacy! As an avid gamer myself, I‘m always happy to share expertise and tips with fellow players around our shared passion. Feel free to let me know on the comments if you have any other questions.

Now why don‘t we wrap up with some hot takes on exciting upcoming releases revealed at the recent Steam Next Fest? Elden Ring and Starfield are sure to consume our spare gaming budgets and time when they land later this year…