I’ve been a Steam customer for a very long time, having spent a few thousand dollars over the years with them. Like many of you, I’ve got a (small?) group of games that I bought and barely-if-ever played, and I’m cool with that. As they say, piracy is a service problem, and Steam is just… easy.
That was until I bought my Deck. Suddenly, I had two devices on which I could play my games: my proper gaming rig upstairs and my Deck plugged into the TV downstairs.
I also however, have a kid that likes video games, so sometimes I let her play a few games on the TV… and that’s where everything breaks down. If she’s playing Lego Marvel on the Deck, my copy of Dyson Sphere Program flakes out upstairs with a warning that “someone else is playing a game, so this game will have to shut off” or some nonsense like that.
I’m suddenly face to face with the fact that I don’t actually own my games and those few thousand dollars weren’t spent on what I expected. It’s… enraging to put it gently.
I can appreciate that there would be an attempt to prevent me from playing the same game on two devices (though I think that’s bullshit too), but to prevent me from playing two different games on two different machines when both are legally purchased running on my own hardware is not ok.
Steam Families User Guide & FAQ: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/054C-3167-DD7F-49D4
My understanding is this should fix your issue. Also, none of that is actually a Steam Deck issue.
I think that its quite clear they don’t have an issue with the steam deck - they’re just voicing that it brought to light how they don’t own their games and it turned them off from buying more licenses on Steam
Yeah. Only GoG nowadays allows you to actually buy and own your games.
And itch, and when devs distribute their own games
Use Family Sharing, instead of sharing your account. Steam’s Family Sharing program is actually one of the most generous in the industry. It used to be the case where you’d get booted off of a game if the person who owned it opened a game. But they changed it a while back, to where you essentially have a digital bookshelf of games, and sharing members can choose from any game on the shelf. As long as you’re not trying to play the same game, everything is kosher. Or hell, you can even buy multiple copies of the same game if you want to play together, the same way you can keep multiple copies of a game on a shelf.
Switching accounts on the Steam Deck is easy too, because you simply pick which profile you want to use. You can set account restrictions, like maybe you only want your kid to be able to play E or E10+ ESRB rated games. Plus it means you’re not sharing save files, because each profile has their own saves; Anyone who has ever lost a cherished save file because of a younger sibling hitting “New Game” will be able to see the value in that. There’s very little reason to avoid setting up Family Sharing.
Honestly, this is 100% the solution for this problem, especially for sharing with a child.
Now, the issue of having a “license” and rights to play a game, vs actually owning the game is still a valid point of contention.
As many others have said, this is because you’re using the same account on both devices, and Steam’s DRM policies will stop you from being able to do what you described. So I won’t go into re-mentioning the many suggestions others have talked about.
What I do want to mention, however, is that this isn’t a problem that comes from having the Deck itself. Set up a separate computer in your living room and use your Steam account there, and you would have the same problem. Does that mean you should be turned off from buying a new computer that’ll run parallel to your main gaming rig?
Absolutely. This is less a criticism of the Deck (which I love) and more about my own coming up against this annoying DRM that I never even knew existed because I only had one place to play.
Welcome to the painful world of DRM that we live in :’)
And to be fair to Steam, they did recently issue a statement and tried reflecting it in their stores to say that you don’t actually outright own all the games you “bought”, as, for some, you are merely purchasing the license to play games that the publishers have decided to put behind a DRM. This has always been the case since the dawn of DRMs, and it was implied that people should understand it, but recent events have made it clear that a lot of people aren’t even aware of it. So you’d be forgiven for not knowing.
It’s funny, I flocked to Steam because I was under the impression that I was owning the games. While other companies were trying to get me to sign onto their “play everything” subscriptions and Google had their “Stadia” (remember them?), Steam let me download the game and install it on my (Linux!) computer with no license key checks, working offline etc. etc. I feel like the assumption that I was in fact buying my games, rather than a license to play them when Steam saw fit was a reasonable one. This discovery was quite enraging.
Again, you’d be forgiven for that. The design language around these sorts of license purchase has been frequently framed as a straight purchase by many companies on the Internet that it’s become essentially the norm that many don’t question. DRM is also proposed without ever stating that it essentially makes the end user purchase a license, as it frames itself as a way for the publisher to retain some control over the product that’s in their interest, and that the end user don’t even need to really know until the rights are exercised. It’s an infuriating piece of technology that is straight up designed to be a rug pull from the get-go.
But, again, to be fair, not all games on Steam have DRM from some info I’ve gathered before. It was impossible to tell, but I think Steam actually shows a little info box now to clarify that DRM is in place or not.
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This is the way. For every steam game I don’t have on gog, I have a repack on my backup NAS.
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Heroic Launcher and GOG is your friend. DRM free ftw.
But seriously Steam Family sharing is the way to go here.
Yeah I’ve recently started tinkering with GOG in part due to this issue. I’m using Lutris in Linux rather than Heroic. I’m not sure if there’s a benefit to one over the other, but either way the size of the library of available games is quite small by comparison and of course I have lots of games trapped in Steam now.
Underneath they are similar, however I was in the same boat as you. Lutris first however after installing a few apps I moved towards heroic.
Heroic is easier to manage your library requires less tinkering and as a benefit for steam deck owners, has controller support in the gui by default and native integration with epic games store.
Lutris works better for non platform games, like old PC games from CDs or EA App.
How I’ve been moving my games over is rebuying games I would be gutted to loose like Fallout 3, and Doom 2016. Then waiting on sales for the rest. Also Amazon Prime has free gog games so you maybe able to get a handful of games every month to move over
I have set up a steam family and created accounts for my kids. Other than only having one copy of some games or games not supporting family sharing it’s been great. I have control over the games they can see in their libraries and we can all play different or the same game with enough licenses at the same time. We often play valheim together.
Could your daughter play in offline mode? If it is not connected to the internet stream does not know you have two devices playing at a time.
Any chance Steam Family sharing onto a separate account for her could help? If not already done might be worth a shot. Your current situation sounds like a pain.
Yes, two separate accounts on family share solve this issue.
Yeah I’ve not looked into that before, but I’ll check it out. I just want to keep the flexibility of the Deck: scoop it out of the TV and hop on the train. If I then have to go through a painful process of switching from family mode to “just let me play my games” mode, I’ll still probably be annoyed, but I’ll give it a try.
im not giving my kid access to hentai puzzle castle 7.
I know this is a joke, but with family sharing you can pick what games get shared.
yah, i purposely share that one with my brother who wont buy games.
How is this any different from not having a steam deck and having to share the one PC?
Just tested it to see what you’re talking about, I’ve never seen that before. Yeah that’s bullshit. It logs you out of the account (kind of?) and when you log back in, it logs out the other computer. What the hell.
What is up with all of the upvotes for pro CORPORATE posts here and down votes for pro consumer? This community is toxic.
What is up with all of the upvotes for pro CORPORATE posts here and down votes for pro consumer? This community is toxic.
I was buying everything on gog before the steam deck, it’s a bit more harder to use them on the deck but theyd5fit your use case. Anyway if the developers do not put drm on their games and do not use steam services you can copy their steam install folder between computers. I don’t think it’s really steam fault for something the game developer require themselves.
