Steam's database, which contains users' personal and encrypted credit card information, has been hacked. Founder Gabe Newell sent an email to users and posted on the Steam Forum, reporting that Steam's forums were defaced on November 6. Upon investigation, he said, Valve found Steam's database had been hacked as well.

As with any account anywhere, change yours passwords on a regular basis.

Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users:

Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums.

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