Steam tightening up developer security with SMS verification following malware hacking attack
Valve is introducing SMS verification for developers as part of its new security measures on Steamworks. This follows earlier incidents of hackers taking over several developers' accounts on the platform, where they added malware to various game builds.
These attacks, which were verified by PC Gamer, only affected less than 100 Steam users, although NanoWar: Cells VS Virus (pictured above) developer Benoît Freslon recently revealed the hackers had taken control of his browser access tokens. This essentially gave the hackers access to any service Freslon had been logged into.
«I just used my dev account to release the game few hours before the hack I suppose,» he shared on X (formerly Twitter).
Thankfully, Steam is now taking action to prevent such an occurrence happening again.
In a new post, Valve said it was implementing changes to how builds are managed in Steamworks (the platform's free suite of tools which developers can use to integrate Steam's functions into their products), as well as when developer's add new users into their Steamworks group.
These changes will require a phone number to be associated with a user's Steamworks account, so that Steam can send confirmation messages to developers when they want to set a game build live.
«For any released app, if you want to update a build to the default branch, Steam will text you a confirmation code,» Steam explained. «You will need to enter this code in order to set the default branch. Note that you will not need a code if your app is not yet released, or if you are updating a beta branch.»
The same will also apply when Steamworks admins want to invite others to their group. There will now be a two-factor authentication process. As well as email
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