Digital distribution service Steam has been hacked, potentially jeopardising the personal information of 35 million subscribers.

Valve, the software company that owns and operates Steam, said it became aware of the breach after intruders defaced the service’s forums on November the 6th.

In a letter to users, Valve’s Gabe Newell writes, “We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.

“We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.”

“We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password,” advised Newell.