Can Steam Games Have Viruses Or Malware In Them?

Some people are understandably cautious when downloading things online. Many of us have been stung by viruses, malware, ransomware, and other horrible things during there time in the digital space, so it’s sensible that people ask this about one of the biggest sources of downloading for gamers, Steam. So can Steam games have viruses or malware?

Whilst it’s certainly possible that a Steam download could contain something malicious like a virus, it’s incredibly unlikely. Valve, the company that owns Steam, makes a lot of money through Steam and they do everything they can to make sure that it’s as safe as possible. Whilst the quality bar for some games on Steam is incredibly low, with dodgy game developers trying to make a quick buck by slapping some free assets into a game and selling it, it’s still incredibly unlikely that Steam will allow anything such as malware in the download.

Steam will do extensive virus checks for anything that is uploaded by the developer and flag up anything that is remotely suspicious and work it out with the developer before pushing any of the content to the end-user. This makes downloads on Steam incredibly safe. Steam distributes millions of games, DLC and content packs to users all around the world without issue, so it’s probably just about the safest place to download games on the PC.

That being said, because of the sheer quantity of downloads that Steam manages, all of the checks are automatic. That means it’s possible, in theory, for something to make it past all of the checks and make it to the end-user. Whilst it is incredibly unlikely, it is possible, but no download is 100% safe online.