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.

  • DigDoug@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    12 hours 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.