Has the Deck turned *off* any other Steam users?

a year ago by Daniel Quinn to c/steamdeck

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.

k1ck455kc 144 points a year ago

This is a problem that Steam Family Share exists to solve.

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unexposedhazard -3 points a year ago

the fact that I don’t actually own my games

It doesnt solve this in the slightest. Steam and game publishers can always take your games away without prior notice.

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NoXPhasma 36 points a year ago

You never own any game, unless you code it yourself. You might hold a CD in your hands, but the game is still owned by someone else. You only have the right to use it as noted in the license you agreed by purchasing it.

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DScratch 13 points a year ago

It’s true. Every book, movie, game or piece of software you’ve ever used (unless you made it yourself) has been subject to some kind of licence, that can be revoked.

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egonallanon 15 points a year ago

Sure but no one is going to come in to my home and take my physical books away in the same way that can happen with online digital services.

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unexposedhazard -2 points a year ago

You have no idea what you are talking about. You can own and resell any physical piece of game media. If you have a gameboy cartridge, nobody can take that game away from you. Also if you have DRM free game files from gog, nobody can take that away from you.

The only case where this disgusting lincense shit is possible, is when games require being online and logging in to unlock the DRM.

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tkohldesac 4 points a year ago

Your physical media will degrade over time and you will eventually lose access to the game you bought physically. There’s no correct answer in this, unfortunately, and is fully your opinion. You can own and resell your physical media until it no longer functions and then where are you? You’re in the same boat as the person who bought digitally and lost access to their license. Even DRM free games from gog are only around until they stop hosting your download. If they stop hosting it and the hardware you own with your copy on it fails, you will again own nothing.

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BlameTheAntifa 17 points a year ago

You’re totally correct. The reason you’re getting downvoted is because that seems tangential to the problem you mentioned (an account can only play one thing at a time), which already has a solution (Family Sharing).

But yes, the world needs strong digital ownership laws yesterday.

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TheLowestStone 9 points a year ago

Yes, but that problem has literally nothing to do with the Steam Deck.

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k1ck455kc 5 points a year ago

Fair, with steam i think most people got into it years ago before "ownership" was even a concern, back before online games were so frequently shutdown soon after release. Its a good thing GOG and Sailing the 7 Seas are an option for preservation, not that it helps with online only games.

Now i still invest in steam because of its convenience. As soon as it becomes more cumbersome to use, i am done. Tbh if 3rd party app stores/secondary drm become more common on the store i will probably stop investing in steam. Its already a big issue that stops me from buying games...(Think denuvo)

Consoles are already to the point where its near impossible to own your game. Xbox overpriced their consoles so we dont buy them and just invest in gamepass. Not to mention their consoles dont work without online accnt. Playstation requires online activation for a disc drive to work with their new consoles. Nintendo doesnt even put 3rd party switch 2 games on the cartridge anymore.

I feel you, but steam is definitely the lesser of the evils here letting you use it on almost any hardware you want, even if you cant avoid the drm(for most games)

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woelkchen 3 points a year ago

Steam and game publishers can always take your games away without prior notice.

Technically: Yes. Legally: Doubtful.

Publishers can choose to no longer run servers but to remove games from the accounts without compensation, would be legal trouble.

When Sony axed Concord, all buyers got a full refund for a reason and that reason isn't that Sony is such a caring company.

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Ulrich 3 points a year ago

There is no doubt. Sony is actually a great example because they were the ones who tried to remove purchases from Discovery. They faced zero legal consequences. There wasn't even any discussion of legal consequences because it's perfectly legal. Ultimately Sony worked it out with Discovery to restore those purchases but they did not do that out of legality or out of kindness. They did it for their reputation. If Sony starts removing your streaming purchases, the same purchases you can make any a dozen other platforms, are you going to continue purchasing from them? Hail nah.

Concord was a bit different in that the content was only available for ~2 weeks so I'd imagine that would fall into some sort of legal grey area and they'd end up being sued or worse. As of yet, I don't think "how long must 'purchases' be available?" has been tested in court.

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woelkchen 1 point a year ago

There is no doubt. Sony is actually a great example because they were the ones who tried to remove purchases from Discovery. They faced zero legal consequences.

The legal justification is right there in the byline of the article you've linked.

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Ulrich 1 point a year ago

You're being needlessly pedantic for the sake of outrage. It solves OP's problem of playing their library in multiple rooms simultaneously.

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Buffalox -23 points a year ago

I don't see how family share solves anything, I looked it up a few years ago, and it seemed pretty useless.
What exactly does family share do that is actually useful?

Edit:
We have tried it now, and yes now you can actually play games owned by other family members.
I'm pretty sure that the current functionality wasn't available last I read about it on Steam.
Now it does what you'd expect from the name.

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Master 62 points a year ago

It lets you play a game on your account while someone else plays a different game from your account. Its literally the solution for ops issue.

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Buffalox 0 points a year ago

I just enabled family share with my wife, but none of us has the games of the other?
And there is no hint of why?

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Buffalox 20 points a year ago

Sorry, there apparently was a second mail the joining party needed to confirm, works now! 👍 😎 😋

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Zombiepirate 30 points a year ago

They updated it in September:

Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members' libraries, even if they are online playing another game. If your family library has multiple copies of a game, multiple members of the family can play that game at the same time. For a more detailed look at how Family Sharing works, see the FAQ below.

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nous 13 points a year ago

They changed it recently where you can have two members of a family able to play two different games at ones (or rather number of copies of the game at once).

But that requires different accounts even if one account owns all the games.

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Buffalox 3 points a year ago

Can we just declare us family members and then have access to each others libraries?

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MeatSweat 8 points a year ago

Yes

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JohnEdwa 7 points a year ago

Yes, but there are limitations on switching, iirc something like 6 months between being able to join a different family and so on. They don't really matter for actual families, but does if you just want to share games with a bunch of friends.

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Jikiya 6 points a year ago

I have a family set up with my brother, two childhood friends, and one of the friends wife. They don't check anything, just have to be invited to join.

And atm, ive been playing Oblivion at the same time as my friend, just have to go offline before starting the game.

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warmaster 94 points a year ago

Bro, seriously.

Your account is yours only. If you want to share your library with her, make her an account and add that to your famiy group. I do this with my 2 kids and everyone plays whatever they want, simultaneously.

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thedaemon 1 point a year ago

My child is not old enough to read, let alone login and create an account. I even think there are legal protections for her against this kind of thing in my country...

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woelkchen 23 points a year ago

My child is not old enough to read, let alone login and create an account.

"make her an account" does not mean that she should do it on her own.

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warmaster 4 points a year ago

He does not need to login with a user and password. He just needs to chose his/her avatar and that's it. Every game console has this.

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dolmen 2 points a year ago

@thedaemon @warmaster Same issue here.
Creating Steam accounts for my kids requires creating and managing e-mail addresses for them.
E-mail and Steam are social network and terms of service do not allow people below 13 yo to have an account.
So I don't that Family share is a solution.

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Xatolos 8 points a year ago

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Fandangalo 57 points a year ago

Put your steam deck in offline mode, problem solved for anything that doesn’t need to ping a server. That’s what I do with my kids.

I don’t disagree on digital rights and all that, but I am able to game because of my Steam Deck.

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Lemmchen 50 points a year ago

Steam Families User Guide & FAQ: https://help.steampowered.com/...

My understanding is this should fix your issue. Also, none of that is actually a Steam Deck issue.

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ISolox 40 points a year ago

Don't use the same account for 2 different people. Create another and use Steam Family sharing to fix your issue.

although you still won't "own" your games, but that's the life of a PC gamer. Best you can do is buy from GOG or find/run shady cracked versions.

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danielquinn 5 points a year ago

Thanks, I'll look into that.

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mic_check_one_two 37 points a year ago

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.

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Mesophar 9 points a year ago

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.

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Subscript5676 26 points a year ago

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?

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danielquinn 14 points a year ago

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.

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Subscript5676 13 points a year ago

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.

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danielquinn 6 points a year ago

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.

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Subscript5676 4 points a year ago

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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the16bitgamer 24 points a year ago

Heroic Launcher and GOG is your friend. DRM free ftw.

But seriously Steam Family sharing is the way to go here.

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danielquinn 3 points a year ago

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.

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the16bitgamer 5 points a year ago

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

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endeavor 21 points a year ago

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BlueSquid0741 7 points a year ago

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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endeavor 4 points a year ago

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Jakeroxs 19 points a year ago

They actually improved this recently however you need a second account and add it to your family, prior it would work just like this with one account, only one user can use a game attached to a library. However now as long as it's not the same game, it let's you play whatever on the second account.

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_spiffy 16 points a year ago

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.

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nokturne213 15 points a year ago

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.

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softcat 13 points a year ago

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undeffeined 4 points a year ago

Yes, two separate accounts on family share solve this issue.

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danielquinn 1 point a year ago

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.

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JoYo 12 points a year ago

im not giving my kid access to hentai puzzle castle 7.

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Fubarberry 8 points a year ago

I know this is a joke, but with family sharing you can pick what games get shared.

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JoYo 3 points a year ago

yah, i purposely share that one with my brother who wont buy games.

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Fleur_ 9 points a year ago

How is this any different from not having a steam deck and having to share the one PC?

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Coreidan 8 points a year ago

Nope. Stop sharing your steam account.

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5too 1 point a year ago

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2xsaiko 7 points a year ago

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.

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DigDoug 7 points a year ago

I agree. While Family Sharing may be an option, it really shouldn't be necessary. Why shouldn't "I" (whether it's my dad playing Cities: Skylines, or actually me playing a round of Balatro on the Deck while waiting for a DotA queue to pop) be able to play two different games that I paid for at the same time without having to jump through any hoops? Before I knew about Family Sharing, I accidentally kicked my dad off Cities: Skylines far too many times simply by waking up my Deck.

Funnily enough, now Family Sharing largely isn't necessary because I started buying a bunch of my games on GOG which means I rarely use my Steam Deck because of how difficult most GOG games are to get running.

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SchwertImStein 5 points a year ago

they aren't difficult to get running on Deck

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DigDoug 1 point a year ago

Maybe it depends what games you want to play. Fallout NV is the only GOG game I've got working with no hitches through Heroic. Every other GOG game I've tried to get running either doesn't run at all, or the controls don't work.

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Gadg8eer 1 point a year ago

As a privacy-valuing PC gamer, I'm afraid that's a bad idea. As great as GOG's way of doing things is/was, I need to transition away from Windows more than I need to transition away from Steam. I'm sorry, but as of 2025 Steam is less evil than Microsoft.

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DigDoug 1 point a year ago

I've used Linux on my PC for about 7 years, now, and I've only found two or three games I had to go back to Windows for (though I don't play very many multiplayer titles, so YMMV). For whatever reason, though, I can almost never get the Steam Deck controls to work with my GOG games. GOG really need to step up - there's a MacOS version of GOG Galaxy, after all.

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Buffalox 4 points a year ago

I agree that's not a good way for steam to handle it.
Seems to me that as long as it's on the same global IP address which indicate it's the same household, it should be considered OK.
But I do understand why they don't want to do what Netflix did originally, where people could share accounts without limit.

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Tenkard 1 point a year ago

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.

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thedaemon -4 points a year ago

What is up with all of the upvotes for pro CORPORATE posts here and down votes for pro consumer? This community is toxic.

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thedaemon -4 points a year ago

What is up with all of the upvotes for pro CORPORATE posts here and down votes for pro consumer? This community is toxic.

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steamdeck

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steamdeck

@sopuli.xyz

login for more options

A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.

As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
[Flair] My post title

The following is a list of suggested flairs:
[Deck] - Steam Deck related.
[Controller] - Steam Controller related.
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[Discussion] - General discussion.
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If your post is only relevant to one hardware device (Deck/Machine/Frame/etc) please specify which one as part of the title or by using a device flair.

These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.

Rules:

Follow the rules of Sopuli
Posts must be related to Steam Hardware or Steam OS in an obvious way.
No piracy, there are other communities for that.
Discussion of emulators are allowed, but no discussion on how to illegally acquire ROMs.
This is a place of civil discussion, no trolling.
Have fun.

Link to our Matrix Space

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