Handle private inventories

A private inventory is an access state, not proof that the user owns no items.

Prerequisites

Read Inventory errors and model retrieval state separately from the last successful data snapshot. Your user interface needs room for available, private, temporarily unavailable, and never retrieved states.

Recommended behaviour

• Preserve the last successful snapshot separately from current accessibility.
• Show a clear privacy or unavailable state.
• Avoid aggressive retries when privacy is the documented cause.
• Retain request IDs for support without retaining credentials.

Update application state

When the documented privacy outcome occurs, record when access was checked and mark the current accessibility state as private. Do not overwrite a last successful snapshot with an empty list. If your product may show older data, label its retrieval time and apply a bounded retention policy.

Do not turn a transient upstream outcome into “private.” Use the HTTP status and structured error code together; human-readable messages are not branching keys.

User recovery

Explain that Steam privacy controls access and let the user retry after changing those settings. Avoid rapid background polling: a privacy change is user-driven, not a transient transport failure.

For escalation, retain the operation, UTC timestamp, HTTP status, and request ID. Never ask the user for a Steam credential or SteamCall API key. See Support.