What is yapworks?
yapworks is a feedback board for Steam games. Every game can have a board. Players post ideas, vote on each other's suggestions, and developers see a clean ranked list of what their community actually wants.
It's a hobby project, built because the existing options either cost money, scatter the conversation across Discords, or bury feedback in Steam forum threads.
Is this affiliated with Valve or Steam?
No. yapworks is an independent hobby project. Steam sign-in goes through Steam's public OpenID endpoint. Steam, the Steam logo, and any game names or art are trademarks of their respective owners.
Why do I sign in with Steam?
Three reasons, all about signal quality:
- It proves you're a real player and not a bot.
- It surfaces the games you own so your library tab shows boards relevant to you.
- It enforces one vote per Steam account, so brigades and vote stuffing don't move the needle.
You can browse most of yapworks without signing in. You only need an account to post, comment, or vote.
Can I create a board for any game?
Yes, for any Steam app. The board creator has to verify ownership or publisher status through Steam during the create flow. Once a board exists, it's the canonical board for that game.
Who can see my activity?
By default your profile is public. Anyone with the link can see boards you've posted on, your comments, and your votes. Public votes carry more weight because they're attributable.
If you'd rather not be visible, you can set your profile to private from settings. Other people then see a locked placeholder instead of your activity.
Boards default to public. Some boards are restricted (owners only, or fully private) at the discretion of the board admin.
Does it cost anything?
No. yapworks is free. No paid tier, no ads, no upsells. It's a hobby project run by one person.
Privacy
yapworks does not sell your data and does not use it for anything outside what is recorded here.
When you sign in with Steam, yapworks stores your Steam ID (the public 64-bit ID), your public Steam persona name and avatar, and the list of Steam apps you own. Owned games are only used to populate your library tab and are not shown to other users. Posts, comments, votes, and follows you create are stored against your Steam ID and shown on your profile unless you set the profile to private from settings.
yapworks sets one cookie: yw_session, an HttpOnly signed login cookie that lasts 30 days. There are no analytics or tracking cookies.
Hosting provider request logs may briefly hold IP addresses and user-agent strings for abuse protection. yapworks does not run its own analytics, error reporting, ad networks, or fingerprinting.
We use third parties for the following:
- Vercel hosts the site and serves it through their CDN. View Vercel's privacy policy here.
- Neon hosts the Postgres database. View Neon's privacy policy here.
- Steam OpenID and the Steam Web API are used for sign-in, to fetch your public Steam profile, and to look up the games you own. View Valve's privacy policy here.
- Steam's content delivery network (steamstatic.com) serves game cover art and header images loaded directly by your browser when you view a board.
- OpenAI's moderation API checks new posts and comments for harmful content. Only the post or comment text is sent. View OpenAI's privacy policy here.
Deleting your data: head to settings and use Delete account. That removes your profile, sessions, votes, follows, and notifications. Past posts and comments stay on their boards so other people's replies still make sense, but they get scrubbed and reassigned to [deleted]. The action cannot be undone.
Feedback on yapworks itself
yapworks dogfoods itself. Anything site-related goes on the yapworks feedback board. Posts there get the same treatment as any other board: vote, comment, track status.
Contact
For anything not covered above, email joel@yapworks.io. It's checked when there's time. yapworks is a free site run by one person, so don't expect the royal treatment.