Pantone
No respect for user privacy with a forced public social media profile
I had no issue whatsoever so far for redeeming my keys, which is the core point of Playsum, but I HATE that my account is attached to some public social media profile I have no power over regarding privacy! This is costing this review two stars because I’ve spent way too much time trying to get rid of that, that plus getting entirerely ignored about that from customer service. What I’m buying is nobody’s business and there’s no way to make the profile completely private: either it’s 100% public to anyone on the Internet, either it’s public to anyone logged in to their account. No freaking way to hide all of it and keep it private to myself! I’ve never seen this before, even Facebook isn’t that bad. I can’t even hide the list of games I’ve bough there, nor hiding that I’m “online” (yeah the website will show to anyone you’re “active” as long as the website is opened), nor being able to change my public username, which I would have choose differently if I knew this BS beforehand. That’s a total disrespect for users privacy rights. For real, I’ve received more friend invites from random people and notifications about the social side of the website within 48h from creating my account than actual useful mail regarding games deals. You to your profile account page and the first 3 tabs are “Discover, Message & Friends”, that doesn’t make any sense. If I was aware of any of that beforehand, I wouldn’t have bought there ever. The website isn’t sold at all as a social media platform first time you land on it, just as another key seller. I’m there to buy games, period. None of this concerns anyone but me. + Additionnaly, each time you go back to your cart, the applied coupon/voucher is removed! Very shady practice, so be really attentive to that! + It takes 24 hours to change your avatar picture… Seriously, I can’t change my username, tried to at least change my profile picture to reduce the “doxxing“, but no… + Finally, I hate that a YouTube video is auto-playing each time I’m opening a game page. Well, with all of that, today was the last time I’m ordering anything there. Given I can’t delete JUST the social profile, I’ll delete my whole account. And just to be sure, I’ll be in the process of making my EU resident GRPD rights work to remove absolutely all my data from this platform. Too bad, the store is looking nice and has great deals, but I just can’t pass that…
Response from PlaysumApr 12, 2026
Hi, Thanks for taking the time to share this feedback. I’m sorry for the frustration, and I’d like to address your concerns directly: • Playsum is both a store and a community platform, similar to Steam. If you only want to use the store, you never need to engage with the community side, and vice versa. • We do understand that privacy matters a lot. We’re a small team of three, but we’re working quickly on regular updates, including more profile privacy controls. • My Co-CEO and I both have backgrounds of working in the trust and safety and privacy industry for 10 years, so this is one of the areas we take most seriously and are very passionate about. We already have some privacy controls in place, and we’re actively working on adding more, including: • making profiles private, • showing game libraries to friends only, • hiding specific games, • and more granular profile visibility options. • Avatars may take up to 24 hours to be reviewed if they trigger our safety systems, but in most cases they are approved immediately. If you refresh the page and the avatar is visible, that means it has already been updated. • We currently don’t have a direct username change tool yet, mainly because we’ve had to prioritize other core features first. However, we’re happy to manually change a user’s username if they contact us at [email protected]. • Like Steam, Playsum currently auto-adds purchased games to your profile. Steam also added game-hiding features only in recent years, and we’re continuing to improve our own controls based on user feedback. • We added auto-adding games to the library because many users requested it and wanted to avoid manually adding each purchase. • I believe this is how coupons work on other stores as well, as leaving the cart in the middle of a purchase exits the purchasing flow and it needs to be restarted. I will look into this to make sure the experience aligns with other stores practices. • Regarding auto-playing vidoes on product pages, this is something I personally asked to be implemented as it visually looks nicer to me and is also how Steam treats videos on store pages. Of course the audio is muted though, as no one likes auto-playing audio haha. However, I'll look into seeing if there is a way we could have a setting for users to disable auto-playing trailers. We’re very open to feedback because, as a small team, we know some things can be missed or not prioritized as quickly as we’d like. That’s why we value direct communication from users to help us identify issues quickly. I’m sorry that parts of the experience felt intrusive, and I appreciate you pointing them out so we can keep improving. I hope this doesn't turn you away from Playsum permanently. Please reach out to me at [email protected] so we can discuss this further. Thanks, Alex Boyd Co-founder & Co-CEO