Summary
- Beware of phishing attempts disguised as Steam playtest invites.
- Steam playtest invites are sent to Notifications, not DMs.
- Avoid clicking unknown links, and be cautious with invites you didn’t request.
Here at AP, we love handhelds, from PC devices like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally to emulations devices, many of which run Android. Of course, using a PC handheld means you should be aware of dangers that lurk with nefarious parties preying on the platform. One such hack has been making the rounds as of late. It’s a classic phishing attempt disguised as a Steam playtest access invite. Thankfully, there is an easy tell anyone can pick up on that the invite is fake.
Don’t click random links sent to your Steam chat
The invite sure looks legit
Steam’s official game playtest invites are sent to your Notifications inbox (the bell in the upper-right corner of the desktop app or the bottom right of the Android app); they are never sent by DM to your chat box (where you talk trash with your friends, which requires a separate app on Android called Steam Chat), which is how the latest phishing attempt on Steam was caught by Reddit users, and as Techradar reports, the message looked very real, where even the address it linked to looked legit at first blush.
The screenshot of the fake invite on Reddit (pictured above) is for a game called Mafia: The Old Country, the fourth entry in the long-running Mafia series, currently under development with a planned release in 2025. As you can imagine, there are a lot of fans who would jump at the opportunity to playtest the game early.
Ultimately, it is important to know how Steam’s playtest invites work. The first thing to know is that if you don’t request an invite, you’re not very likely to get one. So don’t click on invites you haven’t requested. And number two, don’t click invites that come through DM; that’s a no-no. Don’t ever click any unknown links that come through DM. Plus, Steam does offer some security here, so when anyone clicks a link that leaves Steam, the user gets a notification they are about to navigate away from Steam, which would be another tell it’s not an official link.
So stay safe out there, folks, and remember, don’t click unknown links, which is just good advice for using the internet at large, let alone its varied services, such as gaming websites/apps like Steam.
