is anything on the internet "safe"?

that's up to your own discretion.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/920780/Safe/

What you're saying about Steam game downloads can be said about ANYTHING, downloaded from ANYWHERE.

Originally posted by Lime:

is anything on the internet "safe"?

that's up to your own discretion.

Well I don't think you have all 2.1K games installed all at once, even though, you COULD do it, so the likelihood of you or I (3.5K) getting pinched like this is very low. What we shouldn't have to worry about IS a bad download/update to a game that we had sitting on our HDD/SSD for maybe a few years. Steam used to have a "do not update" button, but Valve removed it over 10yrs ago without really telling us users why.

Originally posted by Drain:

What you're saying about Steam game downloads can be said about ANYTHING, downloaded from ANYWHERE.

You are playing "Prey" one day and there is a update for a few MB with no description or news about it, how do you stop it? How do you know it isn't just a simple Valve maintenance update?

"You are playing "Prey" one day and there is a update for a few MB with no description or news about it, how do you stop it? How do you know it isn't just a simple Valve maintenance update?"
-Sometimes my games do get a minor update. So what? If that was something I wanted to stop, I would sever Steam and/or my games from internet access.

I can't remember playing a dangerous game on Steam.

I have the same issues with games that requires you to install kernel level anti-cheat tbh

If you avoid low effort gooner games. You just avoided 90% of the issue.

Free games are the most suspect, even then 99.99 percent of them are safe.