Allow the use of steam deck and pc at the same time

[Mr. Redhand]

its really annoying to have to constantly sign in because the steam deck keeps logging my pc out or my pc keeps logging my steam deck out, it should be hardware locked to my profile so that its always recognized until i manually remove it.

also, why arent we allowed to play 2 different games at the same time, my girlfriend plays stardew valley and i use my steam deck to play other games, and having to do this pointless dance of online and offline mode for games ive purchased seems absurd.

steam should allow us to play separate games simultaneously on the steam deck and home pc that we designate,

[Rabblevox]

I share your frustration with deck/pc. But there is a reason. Think about it. I own Skyrim. I can put it on my deck, both laptops, and my freakin switch for one low price.
BUT (here it comes), where is the business model in allowing unlimited installs and plays for one purchase?
Think this through. You take your girlfriend to a movie. You buy separate tickets and enjoy together.
Same with books or music in an LDR...you each buy a copy, and listen/discuss together.
Same with games. If you both own it, MP is easy.
And since this is one of the most modded, beloved, and exceptional games ever to come out of a one-person studio, maybe whinge about something important?

[Moskeeto]

As long as you're not playing games on both at the same time your account should never be logged out. I have my account logged into 6 devices at the moment and they never get automatically logged out.

[Sanctus-Susanin]

Originally posted by Rabblevox:

I share your frustration with deck/pc. But there is a reason. Think about it. I own Skyrim. I can put it on my deck, both laptops, and my freakin switch for one low price.
BUT (here it comes), where is the business model in allowing unlimited installs and plays for one purchase?
Think this through. You take your girlfriend to a movie. You buy separate tickets and enjoy together.
Same with books or music in an LDR...you each buy a copy, and listen/discuss together.
Same with games. If you both own it, MP is easy.
And since this is one of the most modded, beloved, and exceptional games ever to come out of a one-person studio, maybe whinge about something important?

You went too far. Discussion ends here:
- It is possible right now to play on both PC and Deck simultaneously IT JUST REQUIRES ADDITIONAL UNNECESSARY STEPS. I would like to not have these extra steps.
My use case is to play some heavy online game on PC and while waiting in Lobby for Game session to start, to use Steam Deck.

We already have nice features like family sharing and offline play. People who believe in Valve and Steam Deck are investing tons of moneyz into their Steam account, and current situation just forces me to have 2 different accounts, and buy some games on one of them, some on other, and just enable Family Sharing.
So why not just simplify our lives?

Of course some people will abuse it. But better service always trumps ana1DRM

[Mr. Redhand]

Originally posted by Rabblevox:

I share your frustration with deck/pc. But there is a reason. Think about it. I own Skyrim. I can put it on my deck, both laptops, and my freakin switch for one low price.
BUT (here it comes), where is the business model in allowing unlimited installs and plays for one purchase?
Think this through. You take your girlfriend to a movie. You buy separate tickets and enjoy together.
Same with books or music in an LDR...you each buy a copy, and listen/discuss together.
Same with games. If you both own it, MP is easy.
And since this is one of the most modded, beloved, and exceptional games ever to come out of a one-person studio, maybe whinge about something important?

They offer no physical copies, the argument falls flat when I have a ps5 and I can hand my games to my cousin for free. I bought it's mine. I'm not asking to play multiple games at once, but the ability to say this is my home PC, this is my steamdeck and I can have exactly instance of a game running on my.main PC and 1 instance of a game in my steam deck seems perfectly reasonable.

You understand I can have unlimited installs right now, I just have to put client in offline mode after I install it?

This is just nuisance treatment. This is why people pirate.

I feel like it's a fair solution to allow the steamdeck to be hardware locked to your account and allow the use of it along with your main account and as long as it's the same game each should be able to run a single game separately.

[Mr. Redhand]

Originally posted by Sanctus-Susanin:

Originally posted by Rabblevox:

I share your frustration with deck/pc. But there is a reason. Think about it. I own Skyrim. I can put it on my deck, both laptops, and my freakin switch for one low price.
BUT (here it comes), where is the business model in allowing unlimited installs and plays for one purchase?
Think this through. You take your girlfriend to a movie. You buy separate tickets and enjoy together.
Same with books or music in an LDR...you each buy a copy, and listen/discuss together.
Same with games. If you both own it, MP is easy.
And since this is one of the most modded, beloved, and exceptional games ever to come out of a one-person studio, maybe whinge about something important?

You went too far. Discussion ends here:
- It is possible right now to play on both PC and Deck simultaneously IT JUST REQUIRES ADDITIONAL UNNECESSARY STEPS. I would like to not have these extra steps.
My use case is to play some heavy online game on PC and while waiting in Lobby for Game session to start, to use Steam Deck.

We already have nice features like family sharing and offline play. People who believe in Valve and Steam Deck are investing tons of moneyz into their Steam account, and current situation just forces me to have 2 different accounts, and buy some games on one of them, some on other, and just enable Family Sharing.
So why not just simplify our lives?

Of course some people will abuse it. But better service always trumps ana1DRM

Exactly, signing me out of my account sporadically is just obnoxious. I bought the games from steam, I bought the steam deck form steam, both are on the same IP there is no good reason why I can't play run 2 games at once and not worry about getting screwed because I left my house and forgot to go back online and my cloudsave didn't sync so now I can't continue playing.

I don't even want to known how much money I've spent on steam over the years, but I feel it's enough that it's earned the right to be treated like a customer first and not soemone looking to exploit their system.

[Moskeeto]

Originally posted by Sakari Foxx:

Originally posted by Rabblevox:

I share your frustration with deck/pc. But there is a reason. Think about it. I own Skyrim. I can put it on my deck, both laptops, and my freakin switch for one low price.
BUT (here it comes), where is the business model in allowing unlimited installs and plays for one purchase?
Think this through. You take your girlfriend to a movie. You buy separate tickets and enjoy together.
Same with books or music in an LDR...you each buy a copy, and listen/discuss together.
Same with games. If you both own it, MP is easy.
And since this is one of the most modded, beloved, and exceptional games ever to come out of a one-person studio, maybe whinge about something important?

They offer no physical copies, the argument falls flat when I have a ps5 and I can hand my games to my cousin for free. I bought it's mine. I'm not asking to play multiple games at once, but the ability to say this is my home PC, this is my steamdeck and I can have exactly instance of a game running on my.main PC and 1 instance of a game in my steam deck seems perfectly reasonable.

You understand I can have unlimited installs right now, I just have to put client in offline mode after I install it?

This is just nuisance treatment. This is why people pirate.

I feel like it's a fair solution to allow the steamdeck to be hardware locked to your account and allow the use of it along with your main account and as long as it's the same game each should be able to run a single game separately.

I think a fair way to do it would be to establish a "home" PC that lets you play at least one other game at the same time on another PC as long as they are both located on the same local network.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Originally posted by Moskeeto:

Originally posted by Sakari Foxx:

They offer no physical copies, the argument falls flat when I have a ps5 and I can hand my games to my cousin for free. I bought it's mine. I'm not asking to play multiple games at once, but the ability to say this is my home PC, this is my steamdeck and I can have exactly instance of a game running on my.main PC and 1 instance of a game in my steam deck seems perfectly reasonable.

You understand I can have unlimited installs right now, I just have to put client in offline mode after I install it?

This is just nuisance treatment. This is why people pirate.

I feel like it's a fair solution to allow the steamdeck to be hardware locked to your account and allow the use of it along with your main account and as long as it's the same game each should be able to run a single game separately.

I think a fair way to do it would be to establish a "home" PC that lets you play at least one other game at the same time on another PC as long as they are both located on the same local network.

Except VPNs are a thing that are very common and easy to use.

[Moskeeto]

Originally posted by SlowMango:

Originally posted by Moskeeto:

I think a fair way to do it would be to establish a "home" PC that lets you play at least one other game at the same time on another PC as long as they are both located on the same local network.

Except VPNs are a thing that are very common and easy to use.

A VPN won't be able to have your PCs see each other on the same network. It would take a lot more than a simple VPN to take advantage of such a feature.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Originally posted by Moskeeto:

Originally posted by SlowMango:

Except VPNs are a thing that are very common and easy to use.

A VPN won't be able to have your PCs see each other on the same network. It would take a lot more than a simple VPN to take advantage of such a feature.

It will literally block LAN access to devices unless you specifically allow it.

As well as using a LAN to "verify" is unreliable.

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by Moskeeto:

Originally posted by SlowMango:

Except VPNs are a thing that are very common and easy to use.

A VPN won't be able to have your PCs see each other on the same network. It would take a lot more than a simple VPN to take advantage of such a feature.

Depends on the VPN configuration:

https://www.fortinet.com/resources/cyberglossary/vpn-split-tunneling

For example, most enterprises use this type of configuration. They will typically not want traffic like Youtube sucking up corporate bandwidth so traffic like that would get routed locally while the business applications get routed through the VPN. It's more complicated that that, but that's a good way to understand it.

[Moskeeto]

Originally posted by SlowMango:

Originally posted by Moskeeto:

A VPN won't be able to have your PCs see each other on the same network. It would take a lot more than a simple VPN to take advantage of such a feature.

It will literally block LAN access to devices unless you specifically allow it.

As well as using a LAN to "verify" is unreliable.

Yeah, that's kinda my point. Using the "home PC" to allow other PCs to play games at the same time while on the same LAN could be abused but it's just technically difficult enough that the people abusing it would be extremely minimal and not really worth fretting about.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Originally posted by Mahjik:

Originally posted by Moskeeto:

A VPN won't be able to have your PCs see each other on the same network. It would take a lot more than a simple VPN to take advantage of such a feature.

Depends on the VPN configuration:

https://www.fortinet.com/resources/cyberglossary/vpn-split-tunneling

For example, most enterprises use this type of configuration. They will typically not want traffic like Youtube sucking up corporate bandwidth so traffic like that would get routed locally while the business applications get routed through the VPN. It's more complicated that that, but that's a good way to understand it.

You have to tell VPNs to split tunnel. At least, any good ones. They won't do it automatically since a selling point is so you can bypass geo based filters on websites.

[PsyBlade]

Not really familiar with commercial VPN Software but the most popular free choice ."openvpn", should work fine.

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by SlowMango:

Originally posted by Mahjik:

Depends on the VPN configuration:

https://www.fortinet.com/resources/cyberglossary/vpn-split-tunneling

For example, most enterprises use this type of configuration. They will typically not want traffic like Youtube sucking up corporate bandwidth so traffic like that would get routed locally while the business applications get routed through the VPN. It's more complicated that that, but that's a good way to understand it.

You have to tell VPNs to split tunnel. At least, any good ones. They won't do it automatically since a selling point is so you can bypass geo based filters on websites.

I'm not going to into detail as in the end, it doesn't help the discussion but you can separate traffic at the "domain" level. So you can even segregate specific sites to "split-tunnel" a VPN (i.e. it's not say all 80/443 traffic is routed via VPN or local, you can split it by other criteria). The only way to truly verify is to run something like Wireshark locally to verify what is going through a tunnel or not.

[DeafMuut]

Like, here's the thing. I CAN already use the steam deck to play all my other games at the same time as my computer is playing one. I just family sharing. But SINCE I'm using family sharing and another account, I can't share save games between the steam deck and my main computer. There's no argument against this from a software piracy perspective: this literally is asking to leave their DRM on instead of going offline. But SINCE I AM NOT PLAYING THE SAME GAME AT THE SAME TIME ON MY STEAM DECK, IT SURE WOULD BE NICE TO CARRY OVER SAVE GAMES FROM IT IF I COULD WITHOUT HAVING TO SWITCH TO ANOTHER ACCOUNT TO ALLOW IT TO PLAY AT THE SAME TIME AS MY COMPUTER.

this isn't "weird" or "fringe" this is EVERY SINGLE PERSON who ever wanted to use a steam deck while their computer was on playing games to give to a kid or let a friend hanging out have something to do. Come ON people. There's no legal obstacle on game licenses- you already do this.