Steam Tool Library Manager, Move Steam Games

Steam is a popular online game distribution platform by Valve Software, the creators of Half-Life. It was definitely one of the first movers in the niche and moved from a rough start to a popular platform used by millions of gamers. Steam for the most part works just fine, the platform does have a few issues though like the inability to store games on different hard drives if storage space runs out or the high price of new games.

I have addresses the storage issue in the past here on Ghacks. It all started with the guide How To Move Large Apps Or Games To Another Drive, followed by a review of Steam Mover which has been specifically designed for Steam.

Especially the rise of Solid State Drives has fueled the development of tools such as Steam Mover, or Steam Tool Library Manager which I review today.

The program, just like all the others, is using NTFS Junctions to move Steam games to another hard drive. For that, it requires that Steam is installed on an NTFS partition. Here is how it works.

You need to install the software before it can be used. Steam and your games collection are identified automatically by Steam Tool Library Manager. It is not possible to switch directories or to select directories that already contain data, Steam Mover is more flexible in this regard.

All you need to do is to pick a destination directory on the right side of the interface. Just browser to a folder on another hard drive where you want to store some of your Steam games to make room on the Steam partition. Once done select a Steam game and click on the Move to Storage button.

The program will do its magic and move the game to the new folder on the selected hard drive. This changes nothing game wise. You can still start the game via Steam. All data will be saved to the new directory though. The best way to describe it is that the tool redirects all requests from the original game directory to the new directory.

Steam Tool Library Manager has not been updated for a year which is the biggest issue that I have with the program. The program itself works fine though. Windows users can download the latest version of Steam Tool Library Manager from the developer website.

Update: The website is not responding right now. I have uploaded the latest version of the program to the Ghacks server. You can download it from here: Steam Tool Library Manager (93)

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Steam Forum Hacked, Time To Panic?

The Steam forums were for a time not accessible a few days ago. What felt like a hardware or software issue at that time was actually more serious than this. Users who visit the Steam forums today see an announcement on the first page that informs them that the Steam forum and Steam databases have been attacked. Among the stolen information are Steam user names, encrypted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and even encrypted credit card information.

Valve at this point in time has no evidence that the intruders were able to crack or access credit card numbers or user passwords.

The forums have been taken offline for the time being until the investigation ends. Forum users will be asked to change their password the next time they log into the forums once they are accessible again.

Steam accounts do not seem to be affected according to Valve as forum accounts and Steam accounts are not identical.

Users who have a Steam forum account should do the following:

• Change Steam account and other passwords if it is the same as the forum account password.
• Monitor their Credit Card statements if they have ever paid by Credit Card on Steam.
• Be aware of the possibility of targeted phishing attacks, e.g. disguising as Valve.

It is unlikely that attackers will be able to decrypt the credit card information or passwords. What they may do however is to run a dictionary of the top 1000 passwords against all user accounts to get full access to those accounts. Users who have used weak passwords for their Steam forum account need to change the password as soon as the forums come back up. They also need to make 100% sure that the password is not used for any other services, e.g. their email address or social networking sites. It is recommended to change the password on those sites and services right away to avoid further damage.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: hacked, Hacking, steam, valve