Steam Deck

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A place to discuss and support all things Steam Deck.

Replacement for r/steamdeck_linux.

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:
[Discussion] - General discussion.
[Help] - A request for help or support.
[News] - News about the deck.
[PSA] - Sharing important information.
[Game] - News / info about a game on the deck.
[Update] - An update to a previous post.
[Meta] - Discussion about this community.

Some more Steam Deck specific flairs:
[Boot Screen] - Custom boot screens/videos.
[Selling] - If you are selling your deck.

These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.

Rules:

Follow the rules of Sopuli
Posts must be related to the Steam Deck 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

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

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Has the Deck turned off any other Steam users? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

77 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours 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.