Need a guest or ideally multiple guest profiles.

[zBeeble]

So... on feature sorely lacking on the deck is a guest profile. Ideally, several, but at least one guest profile would make it easier to share your experience with others --- which is just so human...

[Cypherous]

They can just login with their own steam account, just use the change account option in the power menu, steam itself doesn't support guest accounts as you need an account to actually use steam

[zBeeble]

Yeah... that doesn't work if they don't have a steam account. It also doesn't work if I want them to get to try my game. Given how social the deck could be --- I think this particular issue is a key social interlock.

[Boblin the Goblin]

If they don't have a Steam account, they don't get to play games on Steam.

That's the rules. What you want is called "Account Sharing" which is against Valve's ToS.

[Cypherous]

Originally posted by zBeeble:

Yeah... that doesn't work if they don't have a steam account. It also doesn't work if I want them to get to try my game. Given how social the deck could be --- I think this particular issue is a key social interlock.

I mean they aren't going to get to try your game on any guest account as it won't own the game and won't be able to be added under family sharing, this isn't the same as a console, it doesn't just let any user on the machine play all the installed games, only the account that owns it or an account added under family game sharing will have access to your personal library

If they want to try a game you own they will either need to use your account while you're there or create their own account and then be added to yours for family game sharing

If they don't have a steam account then they aren't going to be able to try your games

[zBeeble]

I don't disagree with "the way it works" ... that is how it works. I disagree that this is a good thing. Sharing is natural. It's a pain if your saves get polluted. At the very least, a guest account is a natural addon.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Originally posted by zBeeble:

I don't disagree with "the way it works" ... that is how it works. I disagree that this is a good thing. Sharing is natural. It's a pain if your saves get polluted. At the very least, a guest account is a natural addon.

No it isn't. The license you buy is for your Steam account and only your Steam account. Allowing a guest account would break that license.

[Cypherous]

Originally posted by zBeeble:

I don't disagree with "the way it works" ... that is how it works. I disagree that this is a good thing. Sharing is natural. It's a pain if your saves get polluted. At the very least, a guest account is a natural addon.

Its called family sharing, it will let other users you've specifically allowed, access to your library when you're not using it, steam has the ability to share your games however you also won't get to use them while someone else is "trying" them, that keeps saves and everything else separate like you want but does require them to have a steam account as you have to add that account to your family in order to grant them access

[zBeeble]

Again, the status quo may be as you say. Regardless of the status quo, I posit they should add this functionality. You apparently don't. Or you like re-stating the status quo as if it was a win button. Note that this is the feature request sub-forum. I request this feature. You ... well ... you state that the feature shouldn't or can't be given --- frankly it's not entirely clear.

Regardless of your position, I still request the feature. My reasoning is it's a natural human nature _and_ it's what the competition does. Both are valid reasons.

OTOH, you seem to want it to not happen... based on the agreement. All that means is I can't force Valve to be different. So instead, I'm asking them to be different. Note that Valve chooses to be different rather often ... and then hope a bit --- or wander off and grumble ... either will do.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Originally posted by zBeeble:

Again, the status quo may be as you say. Regardless of the status quo, I posit they should add this functionality. You apparently don't. Or you like re-stating the status quo as if it was a win button. Note that this is the feature request sub-forum. I request this feature. You ... well ... you state that the feature shouldn't or can't be given --- frankly it's not entirely clear.

Regardless of your position, I still request the feature. My reasoning is it's a natural human nature _and_ it's what the competition does. Both are valid reasons.

OTOH, you seem to want it to not happen... based on the agreement. All that means is I can't force Valve to be different. So instead, I'm asking them to be different. Note that Valve chooses to be different rather often ... and then hope a bit --- or wander off and grumble ... either will do.

No storefronts outside of consoles have "guest accounts" and even those are still limited depending on what they are doing.

It isn't "what the competition does" at all.

[zBeeble]

Fair point, I suppose. That is... if you believe that PC gaming doesn't compete with console gaming in the marketplace.

It is true that PC gaming has adopted some different norms --- due to it's inherently different configuration --- but as we move into the area of the Steam Deck ... and I do believe it is an era. It is a technology implementation that is changing the marketplace. As we move into the SteamDeck era, these norms _will_ change.

That said, I still request this change. As additional impetus, I claim that people already lend their deck and that you're leaving valueable data on the table. Game companies might want to know when guests play their game.

[Cypherous]

Originally posted by zBeeble:

Again, the status quo may be as you say. Regardless of the status quo, I posit they should add this functionality. You apparently don't. Or you like re-stating the status quo as if it was a win button. Note that this is the feature request sub-forum. I request this feature. You ... well ... you state that the feature shouldn't or can't be given --- frankly it's not entirely clear.

Regardless of your position, I still request the feature. My reasoning is it's a natural human nature _and_ it's what the competition does. Both are valid reasons.

OTOH, you seem to want it to not happen... based on the agreement. All that means is I can't force Valve to be different. So instead, I'm asking them to be different. Note that Valve chooses to be different rather often ... and then hope a bit --- or wander off and grumble ... either will do.

You're not going to win against valve when the DRM exists because of licensing, so you can say i'm quoting the status quo but those are the contract terms you agreed to when you made your purchase, you can't use steam without an account, there are no features that work without one

And no, these norms won't change, you're entirely free to request the feature, but i would be willing to bet money on it not changing to fit your needs

[zBeeble]

I'm not here to "bet money" ... I'm here to request a feature. Your pessimism is noted, but are you actually against asking for this feature? Would this change, if enacted, make you sad or annoy you?

Anyways... was thinking about it. You could make a mod that might do this. Might want it to be in offline mode (because you'd be symlinking or otherwise messing with the save areas for each game). It's not undoable.

[Cypherous]

Originally posted by zBeeble:

I'm not here to "bet money" ... I'm here to request a feature. Your pessimism is noted, but are you actually against asking for this feature? Would this change, if enacted, make you sad or annoy you?

Anyways... was thinking about it. You could make a mod that might do this. Might want it to be in offline mode (because you'd be symlinking or otherwise messing with the save areas for each game). It's not undoable.

Its not about what i want, its what reality allows, and valves DRM licensing, which is part of what publishers expect when releasing games on the platform, does not allow you to access 2 instances of your library at a single time, so even if you had a guest account, it wouldn't have access to your games anyway, steam doesn't support guest accounts because they don't really add anything when a steam account is in and of itself entirely free

An account is required to make use of ANY steam features, there is literally no benefit to adding that over the end user just registering their own free account and using that

I personally see no reason for that feature to exist and if it did it still wouldn't work the way you seemingly expect it to because the guest steam account would own no games and not be able to be linked to your account in order to allow them to share your library

[zBeeble]

In my last paragraph, I detailed a fairly workable plan. Using symlinks, you simply point the saved game storage at alternate locations. As long as the steam deck is "offline" then this will work.

This would work fine. I might even make a script to do it. I'm fine with launching that manually. Valve could make it work much better... but my rather limited hack would work just fine.

Heck... several UN*Xen (DGUX and HpUX at the very least, from memory) had symlinks that were evaluated using environment variables. That would make the whole thing trivially easy. I haven't looked, but I suspect that if Linux doesn't have a kernel module for that, that it can grow one.

There are people who say you can't and people who show you how.

[Cypherous]

Originally posted by zBeeble:

In my last paragraph, I detailed a fairly workable plan. Using symlinks, you simply point the saved game storage at alternate locations. As long as the steam deck is "offline" then this will work.

This would work fine. I might even make a script to do it. I'm fine with launching that manually. Valve could make it work much better... but my rather limited hack would work just fine.

Heck... several UN*Xen (DGUX and HpUX at the very least, from memory) had symlinks that were evaluated using environment variables. That would make the whole thing trivially easy. I haven't looked, but I suspect that if Linux doesn't have a kernel module for that, that it can grow one.

There are people who say you can't and people who show you how.

Yes you detailed a solution that nobody but you actually needs, because creating a new steam account and adding them to your family actually does the job far better because it also means they can use steams cloud storage and take that progress anywhere else

And nobody said it couldn't be done, we just told you why valve isn't going to do it and why its essentially pointless to do it that way, because steam accounts are literally free and solve the "problem" you think exists in a much better way, what is your friends aversion to creating a steam account exactly?