Admin Privs to Play Games?

[Milk Duck]

is there any way around this? some of my games dont require it so im wondering why some games do. the steam overlay already has admin privs so why does it need privs for certain games?

[Three English Letters شازام]

I don't think games should ever need that level of privileges.
Which ones in particular?

[Zekiran]

It will depend on whether your windows account is able to access the hard drives and information on it.

Admin privs aren't just for "writing to the kernel omg!" it's for allowing specific non-'approved' programs to be run. I have to use admin-priv level on some very old Windows programs such as Paint Shop Pro 8 and Dreamweaver 2004, on my current machine, or else they simply will not run.

So it'd really depend: are you the only user on your computer, OP? Does anyone else have an account on it? I don't know how to deal with Windows 10 *anything*, but it's safe to say that the older a game is, the less likely it is to run properly, and then require additional okays by level of user account.

[Milk Duck]

Originally posted by Three English Letters شازام:

I don't think games should ever need that level of privileges. :amywhat:
Which ones in particular?

random ones that want admin privileges:

this war of mine
sekiro (though my ds3 doesnt want them)
deep rock galactic
amnesia (all of them)

it doesnt make sense to me that one game wants admin privileges but another game doesnt......whats the difference?

[Milk Duck]

Originally posted by Zekiran:

It will depend on whether your windows account is able to access the hard drives and information on it.

Admin privs aren't just for "writing to the kernel omg!" it's for allowing specific non-'approved' programs to be run. I have to use admin-priv level on some very old Windows programs such as Paint Shop Pro 8 and Dreamweaver 2004, on my current machine, or else they simply will not run.

So it'd really depend: are you the only user on your computer, OP? Does anyone else have an account on it? I don't know how to deal with Windows 10 *anything*, but it's safe to say that the older a game is, the less likely it is to run properly, and then require additional okays by level of user account.

im a standard user there is an admin account, i cant always play games bc i dont have admin privileges 24/7

[Falsus Te Deum]

This might not be the case for those games, but for some games, if the steam overlay is not made to work properly it needs Admin rights to work as intended.
If this is sloppy work of the dev's or not is above my knowledge.

Games i know that need Admin rights to make the steam overlay work properly is:

Mass effect
Mafia 1
Fallout 3 vanilla version

[Kargor]

I have never encountered a game needing Admin privileges in many years.

In the old days -- "pre Steam", as far as I'm concerned although the two are independent, I often encountered games that would store things in the installation folder, or use the HKLM registry branch instead of HKCU. Back then, I set a lot of custom permissions on whatever was needed to allow the game to just run. Occasionally, paths would be hardcoded to C:\... as well.

( On funny situation occurred in a Need for Speed game -- the usual "if you set settings as admin they are seen by the user as well, but users can't change them" symptom of games writing things to protected areas didn't work -- the user just didn't see the settings, but couldn't change them either. Turned out, the game had a hardcoded path on C:\ --- and included the actual user name in it. So, they kind of realized that a system could have multiple users, but failed to understand that some of those might not be admins. Of course, this was a lot of work for nothing, since Windows has always had per-user profile data; there was no need to try to make a separate implementation of that ).

The reason for this was that game developers continued their "Win9x" approach where they could just write everywhere. Since "XP Home" kept the "everyone is admin" attitude as well, they just retreated to "XP Pro is not supported" and went on like always.

There was no technical reason for this -- HKCU and HKLM is pretty much the same thing anyway; a minor change and you're done. Install-Dir vs. user profile is slightly, but really just slightly different as it goes through separate APIs -- but in the end, once you have the path you can just use it. So, it's just a lack of interest. telling QA (and users) to just be admin all the time, and the "we've always done it like that" excuse.

This changed with Vista and Win7 -- Microsoft no longer kept the "everyone is admin" even on their Home-releases, and actively discouraged people to be admins all the time. So, game developers had to learn how to do things properly. Steam still doesn't (they are leaking information, including credentials, between Windows user accounts), but that's another subject.

Because of these OS changes, and maybe Steam doing something behind the scenes as well, I haven't seen admin-requirements in ages.

[ShelLuser]

Originally posted by Fischer:

is there any way around this? some of my games dont require it so im wondering why some games do. the steam overlay already has admin privs so why does it need privs for certain games?

I posted a good explanation but due to a hiccup it got zapped, annoying but alas.

Some older games tend to store data in their own program folder, this dates back to a time where Windows didn't have dedicated home directories & data folders. Thing is: the 'program files' locations on a Windows system drive (which is typically drive C) are always secured: you can't "just" access them. So if your game tries then Windows needs to elevate your permissions.

The best solution would be to move your Steam library to another place. I have mine on D and never ran into issues like yours. Another option is to give yourself writing permissions to the Steam game library. I'd be happy to explain again if you want me to, but for now I'm not going to go through the trouble of writing it all down again without knowing if this is actually useful for someone.

[Milk Duck]

Originally posted by ShelLuser:

Originally posted by Fischer:

is there any way around this? some of my games dont require it so im wondering why some games do. the steam overlay already has admin privs so why does it need privs for certain games?

I posted a good explanation but due to a hiccup it got zapped, annoying but alas.

Some older games tend to store data in their own program folder, this dates back to a time where Windows didn't have dedicated home directories & data folders. Thing is: the 'program files' locations on a Windows system drive (which is typically drive C) are always secured: you can't "just" access them. So if your game tries then Windows needs to elevate your permissions.

The best solution would be to move your Steam library to another place. I have mine on D and never ran into issues like yours. Another option is to give yourself writing permissions to the Steam game library. I'd be happy to explain again if you want me to, but for now I'm not going to go through the trouble of writing it all down again without knowing if this is actually useful for someone.

i have 2 drives on my pc but i dont have access to one of them. on my old pc i had two drives C and D and i actually used to download all my games and stuff onto the D drive bc it was way bigger.

this "new" pc (we bought it used), has way less room and i dont know why i cant access the other drive but if i could id probly try to do the same thing with my old pc.