Wallpaper Engine is a brilliant tool that uses the Steam Workshop to offer custom, user-designed wallpapers at the click of a button. And these aren't just static images you could otherwise grab off Google either; many are fully animated, reactive, and even boast features like Spotify integration. However, relying on the community to build this library has proven to be a double-edged sword, as bad actors have been using the Workshop to spread malware through 'application wallpapers'—backgrounds that run .exe files directly on a user's machine.
In response, the development team has announced plans to permanently remove application wallpapers from the Steam Workshop. "While this sounds drastic, it affects merely 0.5% of all wallpapers, with actual user numbers being much lower than even that," the team stated. The announcement also noted that the risk to the wider player base was relatively contained, adding that "the overwhelming majority of users never used any application wallpapers at all, since they are hidden by default in the app."
As part of this update—which will be rolled out "in the next week"—the team is also "cleaning up the Workshop."
To ease the transition, the team is offering a grace period for users...
