If you use Steam's services to share links of copyright protected content, you may find you need to use another messaging platform to do so in the future, as the chat system has begun blocking links to certain torrent websites, whether the content you're linking too is illegitimate or not.
Oddly though, it isn't all torrent sites, or even all of the biggest ones. Kickasstorents and all its derivative mirrors and shortened links don't seem to be getting through to anyone, but links to the Pirate Bay aren't a problem.
What's a little bizarre however is that while Valve's game platform will occasionally tell you that a link has been blocked, sometimes it doesn't, merely removing it and leaving both the sender and the sendee out of sync in terms of what's been sent and what's been seen.
Of course with pirated games being common place on sites like Kickass.to, it's no real surprise that Valve takes a bit of a hard line with it, especially since spamming those sorts of links is something that can become irksome to legitimate gamers. Some of those sites can also link through to popups and malicious, malware infected adverts, so no doubt Valve wants to keep people away from those too.
But it's a little concerning that Valve is keeping an eye on private chats in this way.
[Thanks TF]
