According to a blog post published by Valve this week, Steam account theft has increased roughly 20x since the company began allowing users to trade items in 2011, and it now sees roughly 77,000 Steam accounts “hijacked and pillaged” every month.
It’s useful insight into the Steam marketplace, and it means Steam developers are part of an economy large enough that every user with a meaningful stash of cash, tradable items or cards in their Steam account is now a worthwhile target for hackers.
“Enough money now moves around the system that stealing virtual Steam goods has become a real business for skilled hackers,” reads the post. “We can help users who’ve been hacked by restoring their accounts and items, but that doesn’t deter the business of hacking accounts. It’s only getting worse.”
The post comes by way of explanation for why new security features like two-factor authentication and 3-day trade holds were recently added to Steam though, as Rock, Paper, Shotgun notes, Valve has already loosened some of the new restrictions in response to user feedback.