Children & Parents - 2+ Games on Same Acct at The Same Time

[readthis13]

I know this has been discussed, and I have a suggestion to a fix...



But first, the backstory here:

Steam is now a multi-generational product. When it was originally developed, we didn't have as many situations as the one listed here. But now we do, and it's only going to continue to be more prevalent. And not only myself, but many friends of mine deal with this exact situation...



My daughter, 11 y/o, loves to play games like Planet Zoo & Ark (or older games I've "owned" for years). Countless hours have been spent designing bases/zoos, training animals, etc, etc. But now and again, I'd like to play a game, or something I bought for myself to play, that's also on my main Steam account. But Steam gives to simple path to this.

See, when I bought Planet Zoo, ARK, and other games like this, my daughter was even younger (6-9 y/o, and there was no legitimate reason for her to have her own Steam account.

But over the years, as she's played more, it's consumed more of my personal Steam account usage. And kicking her off to play doesn't always seem fair. Especially when on break.

Furthermore, her usage contributes to Steam and the games there. She finds out about new games from Steam and that leads to me buying them for her. But if she's pushed off of Steam to something like Roblox, the money and attention goes there (and trust me, I've spent a LOT of money there). This is a lose/lose for Steam, me, and the devs on Steam.

Over some misguided fear about abuse, this pushes people away from this platform because of its antiquated policies based on fear of abuse.



So here we are:

And that's where my gripe comes in. While at my own home, why in the world can't my family play 2 separate games that I have paid for on 2 separate computers at the same time? I can play any 1 game on an unlimited number of computers at 1 time. Why would another game being played at the same time be an issue? It's not an issue for the devs. The common issue is Steam.

(I'm sorry, but IMO, there's no good argument for this to be the case. I've read them all, and they're all terrible. The game should allow for itself to be played for 1 instance 24/7, and shouldn't care who is playing it.)

And, this is especially true if both games on steam are in my own home at the same time...

See, some might claim this could support abuse, but how?

Only ONE person can play the SAME game at the SAME time. So, if I owned a physical copy of the game, I could loan it out, and then I'd no longer be able to play it. This, to me, seems fair. The game is only being used by one person at a time.


But here's where my argument makes even more sense...

If the devs (and Steam) are opposed to anyone else touching a game that I paid for in my Steam account but me, then by this logic, they would be saying that my daughter should no longer be allowed to play Planet Zoo because I bought it on my Steam account (not hers).

Again, either 1 game can be played by 1 person 24/7. OR, only one person (the original buyer) can play the game no matter what. And if it's the 2nd option here, then children cannot play games purchased by their parents.

Let's see that one argued publicly.....

(Please, go ahead and argue the point as to why my daughter shouldn't be allowed to play a game I bought on my Steam account for her to play because it wasn't purchased on her Steam account...)

But, we're going even further here. I'm saying that in the same house, I cannot play 2 separate games.


And, finally, here comes the proposed solution:

To me, this is a simple fix.

Steam allows you to stream locally. It knows the computers on your own network that are logged in. It knows the latency, IP, subnet, etc, etc. It knows if both computers are able to talk to each other and when they're not. And as such, it should allow for family members to play on the same network with computers that are logged in on the same Steam account (and validated).

More and more people have multiple computers these days. But, in my opinion, children should not be forced to have their own Steam accounts, and adults should have a path to allow them to safely game without being a hindrance to their ability to do the same. Even if you could move games into a Family Play section of Steam to allow for something like this to occur.

So, if Steam is worried about abuse still, then I'd love to see a local network-based Family Play option. As long as the computers were on the same network and logged in, separate games could be played by both children and parents without issue. And if a computer wasn't validated as on the local network/home, then it wouldn't work. Simple as that.


And finally, I'm not against paying twice for co-op when required. I did set up a 2nd Steam account to play Ark in Co-Op w/ my daughter (but still didn't make her her own account). To me, this was the fair approach as 2 people were playing it at the same time. I'm not trying to circumvent anything. However, I'd much preferred to have been able to buy a 2nd copy on my master Steam account and allowed us to both play from there as mentioned above as it's far easier to maintain.



So, I hope to see this implemented. Let's create a centralized place (Steam) for families to be able to play games on the same network. Let's stop working from a place of fear, and work from a place of common sense.

This is a win/win for children that want to use Steam, but aren't old enough to have their own account.

[Cathulhu]

Sure, let me set up a simple split tunnel VPN and use that service to build up a rent a game service.

Sorry, but way to easy to exploit.

[Brian9824]

Its a lose/lose for developers. It is incredibly easy to spoof a "home network" that is what VPN's are designed to do and take seconds to setup.

DEVELOPERS don't want it, as it would make it easy for people to abuse and steal games, in fact its why many developers opt out of family sharing, and why its up to the DEVELOPER if they choose to opt into family sharing.

Again a family with 4 teenagers for instance would love this, as they could buy 1/4 of the games. Developers on the other hand would hate seeing their sales drop by 75%.......

[Aachen]

引用自 readthis13：

.... My daughter, 11 y/o, loves to play games like Planet Zoo & Ark (or older games I've "owned" for years). Countless hours have been spent designing bases/zoos, training animals, etc, etc. But now and again, I'd like to play a game, or something I bought for myself to play, that's also on my main Steam account. But Steam gives to simple path to this.

See, when I bought Planet Zoo, ARK, and other games like this, my daughter was even younger (6-9 y/o, and there was no legitimate reason for her to have her own Steam account.

But over the years, as she's played more, it's consumed more of my personal Steam account usage. And kicking her off to play doesn't always seem fair. Especially when on break.

Furthermore, her usage contributes to Steam and the games there. She finds out about new games from Steam and that leads to me buying them for her. But if she's pushed off of Steam to something like Roblox, the money and attention goes there (and trust me, I've spent a LOT of money there). This is a lose/lose for Steam, me, and the devs on Steam ....

Seems you've demonstrated ITT quite legitimate reasons for you to create a separate user account at the outset.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Fundamentally, one could blame this on two things:
1. Steam accounts were essentially meant to be single-user accounts in the first place. (Even Family Sharing is really only a half-butt afterthought in this regard.)
2. The Steam account login is used as DRM.

Additionally, I guess you could also blame the fact that you can't just move your daughter's games to a separate account, but that's arguably less of the problem here.

See, the difference here is that if you bought physical CD copies of games for yourself, and physical CD copies of games for your daughter, your daughter would be able to play them just fine on her computer at the same time you play yours.

But the Steam account has to get in the way.

Because Valve and/or various publishers are relying on the Steam client to provide DRM, Valve basically just threw together this idea of "oh, you can't play games from the same library at the same time on two different machines". This happens even if you're the one playing them -- let's say you have one machine idling a clicker game while you want full system resources to play another game so you use another computer. That won't work either. And it still won't work even if you use Family Sharing to share the game to a new account for your daughter.

Really, what Steam ought to do is to just let people play games on different computers if they're on the same IP. (Or, at least allow that to happen under Family Sharing.) Now, some critics of this version of the idea say "but then you can just spoof IP with a VPN", but (1) VPNs are already banned on Steam anyway (for other reasons), and (2) this whole prohibition on running two games on two different computers isn't even airtight in the first place. Meanwhile, letting same-IP computers run different games is most likely to happen in a family setting since everyone would be in the same household.

Meanwhile, here's ideas you can try to make stuff work for you, for games already on your Steam account:
* Run the game without Steam running. This works for some Steam games, though you have to test each one out on your own. (If they can run without Steam, that tells you the game is natively DRM-free even on Steam.)
* Put one computer in Offline Mode. (Obviously, online features won't work, which may even include some achievement recording, depending on the game. However, note that your playtime still counts toward the playtime limits for refunds, so be mindful of this if you ever plan to get refunds.)

Note that...

引用自 Aachen：

:spicecrystal: Seems you've demonstrated ITT quite legitimate reasons for you to create a separate user account at the outset.

...getting a new separate Steam account for your daughter now will not let you transfer the games she plays to her Steam account. They'll still be stuck on your Steam account. There are probably other, more reasonable reasons for this restriction (such as preventing hijackers from stealing arguably the most important part of a Steam account). But if you want the games on her account, you/she will need to rebuy them. This is a quite clear drawback compared to just buying games in a traditional format where each game is just a standalone product. Unfortunately these are stuck to your account.

If you buy games DRM-free, you'll be able to use them as standalone products rather than have them glued to what's fundamentally a single-user account. Though this still doesn't really help you with the games that are already on your Steam account.

[Nx Machina]

Your boss has decided to split your wage 50/50 with your co-worker. He has taken this measure so you can make a stand that developers, publishers should only be paid once for a game, while you get multiple copies.

Should you have any queries please contact HR and choose the option - "i am not going to rent out my Steam library to others, trust me Valve."

Thanks for your understanding.

[nullable]

Unfortunately you're not the first parent to have made these sorts of decisions and have these sorts of complaints.

1. We're still in the first few generations of people figuring out how to manage this stuff across families and children. Making your daughter a Steam account when she was born does feel silly. But when should you do it exactly? Hard to define it is. Not a lot of guidance out there perhaps.
   
2. Ultimately, Valve is not responsible for your decision to engage in account sharing with your daughter. I understand what the temptation was. I understand it's not crazy or unreasonable. But there's clearly defined and long standing rules and you're not the first Steam user with a child.
   
3. Rolling your own solutions, ignoring or not understanding account rules and limitations, wanting to solve problems after the fact, all have consequences, especially when you guess wrong.
   
4. Long term, what was your plan? She wasn't going to be six forever. Your daughter being too young to think about the future, or reality, isn't as strong an argument as you think.

Methinks if you were able to avoid enough inconvenience you'd be account sharing until she turned 18 and then be upset because you'd only just discover that those dozens or hundreds of licenses aren't transferable, which wasn't a secret or a surprise.

At any rate, sounds like you should roll her own account, set up family sharing, and re-buy some of those games when you see them on sale.

Hopefully other parents, or parents to be see posts like this and learn from your mistakes.

[readthis13]

First - thanks for the constructive feedback / comments. Those of you that aren't arguing just to do so, or making knee-jerk claims (as in the next quote) seemingly understand that this is a reasonable item to want changed.

Also, please don't take my direct response as any direct attack. But for many of the responses, I don't honestly believe you are serious and believe what you're writing. I might be wrong, but there's little logic in the responses that'd indicate otherwise, so who knows...

引用自 Cathulhu：

Sure, let me set up a simple split tunnel VPN and use that service to build up a rent a game service.

Sorry, but way to easy to exploit.

Everything can be taken advantage with enough work. However, this is far from a "way to easy" to a point it's done at scale. And renting out games that can only be played by one person at a time wouldn't make a lot of sense. Every service can be exploited to some degree, even Steam as it sits now. But that's not a good reason not to innovate and allow for better use of the product. I showcased many ways in which further engagement can occur when kids are kept in the Steam platform. Attention, usage and money then follow. This is a larger win than being concern I'm trying to setup a "split tunnel VPN" so I can rent games that only one person at a time could play, with a cap on 2-3 (for whatever Steam would deem is fair for a family to use at the same time)...

引用自 Aachen：

引用自 readthis13：

.... My daughter, 11 y/o, loves to play games like Planet Zoo & Ark (or older games I've "owned" for years). Countless hours have been spent designing bases/zoos, training animals, etc, etc. But now and again, I'd like to play a game, or something I bought for myself to play, that's also on my main Steam account. But Steam gives to simple path to this.

See, when I bought Planet Zoo, ARK, and other games like this, my daughter was even younger (6-9 y/o, and there was no legitimate reason for her to have her own Steam account.

But over the years, as she's played more, it's consumed more of my personal Steam account usage. And kicking her off to play doesn't always seem fair. Especially when on break.

Furthermore, her usage contributes to Steam and the games there. She finds out about new games from Steam and that leads to me buying them for her. But if she's pushed off of Steam to something like Roblox, the money and attention goes there (and trust me, I've spent a LOT of money there). This is a lose/lose for Steam, me, and the devs on Steam ....

:spicecrystal: Seems you've demonstrated ITT quite legitimate reasons for you to create a separate user account at the outset.

This is another thing that doesn't make sense to me... How is setting up a separate account with one copy of the game on it all that different than the game being on my account? The answer is that it's actually not. In fact, someone could just create a new account for every game they had. The game was bought once, and can only be played at one time. But in this separate account example, if someone is playing one game, someone can play another game on another account. Making a separate account is a needless mess of extra work, however. But it does illustrate how needless this arbitrary rule is. Plus, can you imagine Steam dealing w/ all the extra issues of these accounts getting locked, hacked, etc? That added cost alone would likely cause this change to happen.

That said, I'm arguing around in circles here. And, I think some are arguing just for the sake of arguing. In fact, they'd rather argue a point they don't agree with (if we're being honest with ourselves) and deal with the inconvenience of it all than stand up to what makes logical sense. Such is the nature of people arguing online I suppose...

引用自 Snakub Plissken：

Unfortunately you're not the first parent to have made these sorts of decisions and have these sorts of complaints.

1. We're still in the first few generations of people figuring out how to manage this stuff across families and children. Making your daughter a Steam account when she was born does feel silly. But when should you do it exactly? Hard to define it is. Not a lot of guidance out there perhaps.
   
2. Ultimately, Valve is not responsible for your decision to engage in account sharing with your daughter. I understand what the temptation was. I understand it's not crazy or unreasonable. But there's clearly defined and long standing rules and you're not the first Steam user with a child.
   
3. Rolling your own solutions, ignoring or not understanding account rules and limitations, wanting to solve problems after the fact, all have consequences, especially when you guess wrong.
   
4. Long term, what was your plan? She wasn't going to be six forever. Your daughter being too young to think about the future, or reality, isn't as strong an argument as you think.

Methinks if you were able to avoid enough inconvenience you'd be account sharing until she turned 18 and then be upset because you'd only just discover that those dozens or hundreds of licenses aren't transferable, which wasn't a secret or a surprise.

At any rate, sounds like you should roll her own account, set up family sharing, and re-buy some of those games when you see them on sale.

Hopefully other parents, or parents to be see posts like this and learn from your mistakes.

Yeah, making a new Steam account when a child is born doesn't make sense. And, I know Valve isn't responsible for this decision. But, this forum is for "Suggestions / Ideas", and this is one I stand behind and belive they should change. I'm a customer of Steam, and like any business, they should be reasonably concerned with my opinion.

Again, work with parents to create a better environment for families. Encourage them and the outcome will far outpace the downside. Look at the revenue Roblox generates. Much of that revenue is because they have that captive audience. There's no reason Valve couldn't reclaim some of this, and that'd lead into greater sales and more money to further develop this platform.



At any capacity, regardless of those that'll argue to their own demise, I can't imagine anyone honestly feeling that my stance here is wrong. I want to be able to buy games for my kid, and myself, and play them under one account that I've created / control at the same time.

I'm not trying to circumvent any money that any devs should have gotten (in fact, the games my daughter plays, including all the DLC for every stupid animal on the planet - in Planet Zoo - aren't games I'd have ever purchased myself). But, this has continued to become enough of frustration that I have reconsidered where and how I buy games for her going forward.

And, maybe I'm the only parent out there that shares this frustration, but I very much doubt it.

I believe that what I'm requesting is more than valid and fair. I think the old way of dealing with this should be reconsidered.

引用自 Quint the Alligator Snapper：

Fundamentally, one could blame this on two things:
1. Steam accounts were essentially meant to be single-user accounts in the first place. (Even Family Sharing is really only a half-butt afterthought in this regard.)
2. The Steam account login is used as DRM.

Additionally, I guess you could also blame the fact that you can't just move your daughter's games to a separate account, but that's arguably less of the problem here.

See, the difference here is that if you bought physical CD copies of games for yourself, and physical CD copies of games for your daughter, your daughter would be able to play them just fine on her computer at the same time you play yours.

But the Steam account has to get in the way.

Because Valve and/or various publishers are relying on the Steam client to provide DRM, Valve basically just threw together this idea of "oh, you can't play games from the same library at the same time on two different machines". This happens even if you're the one playing them -- let's say you have one machine idling a clicker game while you want full system resources to play another game so you use another computer. That won't work either. And it still won't work even if you use Family Sharing to share the game to a new account for your daughter.

Really, what Steam ought to do is to just let people play games on different computers if they're on the same IP. (Or, at least allow that to happen under Family Sharing.) Now, some critics of this version of the idea say "but then you can just spoof IP with a VPN", but (1) VPNs are already banned on Steam anyway (for other reasons), and (2) this whole prohibition on running two games on two different computers isn't even airtight in the first place. Meanwhile, letting same-IP computers run different games is most likely to happen in a family setting since everyone would be in the same household.

Meanwhile, here's ideas you can try to make stuff work for you, for games already on your Steam account:
* Run the game without Steam running. This works for some Steam games, though you have to test each one out on your own. (If they can run without Steam, that tells you the game is natively DRM-free even on Steam.)
* Put one computer in Offline Mode. (Obviously, online features won't work, which may even include some achievement recording, depending on the game. However, note that your playtime still counts toward the playtime limits for refunds, so be mindful of this if you ever plan to get refunds.)

Note that...

引用自 Aachen：

:spicecrystal: Seems you've demonstrated ITT quite legitimate reasons for you to create a separate user account at the outset.

...getting a new separate Steam account for your daughter now will not let you transfer the games she plays to her Steam account. They'll still be stuck on your Steam account. There are probably other, more reasonable reasons for this restriction (such as preventing hijackers from stealing arguably the most important part of a Steam account). But if you want the games on her account, you/she will need to rebuy them. This is a quite clear drawback compared to just buying games in a traditional format where each game is just a standalone product. Unfortunately these are stuck to your account.

If you buy games DRM-free, you'll be able to use them as standalone products rather than have them glued to what's fundamentally a single-user account. Though this still doesn't really help you with the games that are already on your Steam account.

Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful response. I see we agree.

[nullable]

引用自 readthis13：

Yeah, making a new Steam account when a child is born doesn't make sense. And, I know Valve isn't responsible for this decision. But, this forum is for "Suggestions / Ideas", and this is one I stand behind and belive they should change. I'm a customer of Steam, and like any business, they should be reasonably concerned with my opinion.

Again, work with parents to create a better environment for families. Encourage them and the outcome will far outpace the downside. Look at the revenue Roblox generates. Much of that revenue is because they have that captive audience. There's no reason Valve couldn't reclaim some of this, and that'd lead into greater sales and more money to further develop this platform.



At any capacity, regardless of those that'll argue to their own demise, I can't imagine anyone honestly feeling that my stance here is wrong. I want to be able to buy games for my kid, and myself, and play them under one account that I've created / control at the same time.

I'm not trying to circumvent any money that any devs should have gotten (in fact, the games my daughter plays, including all the DLC for every stupid animal on the planet - in Planet Zoo - aren't games I'd have ever purchased myself). But, this has continued to become enough of frustration that I have reconsidered where and how I buy games for her going forward.

And, maybe I'm the only parent out there that shares this frustration, but I very much doubt it.

I believe that what I'm requesting is more than valid and fair. I think the old way of dealing with this should be reconsidered.

Using a system wrong can be frustrating. Sometimes the solution is to start using it correctly.

Despite your claims about not wanting to abuse the system, the reality is if IP holders don't want users doing X, they're not going to create a system that allows users to do X. Users can't be trusted, if you let them do share games and you can't control that you won't be able to control it. Maybe in the future systems will be locked down tight enough and orderly enough that piracy and abuse are inconsequential. At that point what you want becomes more reasonable. But asking publishers, developers and Valve to trust you? It's laughable.

You can decide to buy games elsewhere, but I think you'll find most other platforms don't accommodate your beliefs either. There's pretty good reasons why things are the way they are today. Tomorrow can be different.

MS Game Pass is becoming pretty popular and I think subscriptions will be the future and that will negate a lot of these issues. Of course people will want to share subscriptions too, and be able to rationalize that, but that's another fight to have. It's something subscriptions services have been wrestling with for years, because users can't be trusted.

[Brian9824]

It won't be done OP. So many reasons that you should know since you supposedly know this issue is brought up alot

1. People renting accounts
2. Dev's losing sales, they don't want a family with 2-3 kids only buying 1 copy and everyone being able to play it (they would add local coop if they wanted that)
3. People turning their account into a business making a gaming cafe
4. Its not secure enough, anything can be spoofed on a PC.
5. The amount of scanning steam would need to do to your PC/Hardware would alienate so many people

and on and on and on

Again, it boils down to you buying a PERSONAL license, which means its licensed for YOU. Not everyone in your family.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

引用自 readthis13：

Also, please don't take my direct response as any direct attack. But for many of the responses, I don't honestly believe you are serious and believe what you're writing. I might be wrong, but there's little logic in the responses that'd indicate otherwise, so who knows...

Honestly, I think a sympathetic interpretation for some of these is that they're forum regulars that have seen similar incarnations of this request mentioned a number of times and feel tired of explaining repeatedly to people why they think it's not gonna happen.

But, even in such an interpretation, there is a certain condescension on their part, a sort of "I know better than you", which doesn't really belong in a space for suggestions (i.e. things that would change the status quo, by their very nature). Perhaps this or another suggestion won't be implemented, but I don't think most anyone who posts a suggestion is under the impression that their suggestion will get implemented anytime soon. Not even the angriest OPs.

引用自 readthis13：

At any capacity, regardless of those that'll argue to their own demise, I can't imagine anyone honestly feeling that my stance here is wrong. I want to be able to buy games for my kid, and myself, and play them under one account that I've created / control at the same time.

I'm not trying to circumvent any money that any devs should have gotten (in fact, the games my daughter plays, including all the DLC for every stupid animal on the planet - in Planet Zoo - aren't games I'd have ever purchased myself). But, this has continued to become enough of frustration that I have reconsidered where and how I buy games for her going forward.

And, maybe I'm the only parent out there that shares this frustration, but I very much doubt it.

I believe that what I'm requesting is more than valid and fair. I think the old way of dealing with this should be reconsidered.

It's not wrong -- unless one takes "right" to mean that publishers ought to be able to do anything they want to restrict access to their games and well-meaning customers such as yourself who run into problems with such restrictions are but collateral damage in their control of their product.

But that thinking is what led to very problematic forms of DRM in the first place -- and in this regard, Steam is typically seen as a better form of DRM in part because it's "lighter" and does less to inconvenience players, even though it doesn't protect against piracy as strongly as other "heavier" forms of DRM.

However, fundamentally, it's still DRM, and can still run aground in some situations...such as yours. That said, in the absence of Valve doing something with how the Steam client or the Family Sharing feature works (which, I will agree with others, seems rather unlikely), your best bet is to see which of the games you and your daughter play are DRM-free, and if they're not, seek out and rebuy DRM-free versions of those games.

But meanwhile, this is the suggestions board after all, so it does make sense to mention the problems that Steam presents to you here. Maybe one day it'll be a better platform.

[Sasori Kigaru]

I still do not understand why a parent wouldn't want to just make a steam account for their child. Its not like its hard to do.

The ONLY inconvenience, and this is a bit of a stretch, is that if you only have one computer in the whole house, you'd have to log out of yours and log into theirs. Otherwise, with multiple computers in the same house, there is literally ZERO reason regardless of age of the child. I could straight up make an account for my five year old RIGHT this second if I wanted to, granted I plan on waiting about a year or so until they show more of an interest in gaming themselves.

Also the whole "Well if I had a physical copy then I could play it and so could my friend if I gave it to them!"

No. No you couldn't and if so that was rare.

Console games don't work that way, those are physical copies (at least they were back then.) Once you gave someone your disc, whether its a PS2 game or a N64 or Gamecube or XBOX... once you gave away your disc to a friend you could NOT play without it.

Most PC games that required discs also required a CD key on the case which could only be used one time only. CoD4 Modern warfare, the CD I installed a long time ago. I tried to reinstall it once, the new install needed a CD Key. Didn't work cause the key was already active.

I'm not going to go around listing other examples, so...

TL:DR- Just make a steam account for your child. From one parent to another, there is zero excuses. Also don't use rose tinted glasses when looking in the past, physical copies still needed CD keys or you could only use one disc(game) at a time and if you didn't have it then you didn't play it.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

引用自 Sasori Kigaru：

Also the whole "Well if I had a physical copy then I could play it and so could my friend if I gave it to them!"

No. No you couldn't and if so that was rare.

Console games don't work that way, those are physical copies (at least they were back then.) Once you gave someone your disc, whether its a PS2 game or a N64 or Gamecube or XBOX... once you gave away your disc to a friend you could NOT play without it.

OP is talking about (1) playing different games on different machines at the same time, not playing the same game on different machines at the same time ("(in fact, the games my daughter plays, including all the DLC for every stupid animal on the planet - in Planet Zoo - aren't games I'd have ever purchased myself)"), and (2) OP's talking about a family member (their daughter, and probably a young child at that), not a friend.

引用自 Sasori Kigaru：

Most PC games that required discs also required a CD key on the case which could only be used one time only. CoD4 Modern warfare, the CD I installed a long time ago. I tried to reinstall it once, the new install needed a CD Key. Didn't work cause the key was already active.

Frankly speaking, this is a problem with newer games; the physical medium isn't actually the game itself but merely an installation aid.

I get why publishers do it, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem.

[nullable]

引用自 Sasori Kigaru：

I still do not understand why a parent wouldn't want to just make a steam account for their child. Its not like its hard to do.

It's not a matter of difficulty or not wanting to. In most cases it's just an oversight and not an aspect of the 21st century parents automatically think of, "Better start creating accounts for my children." It's not like their parents had to worry over it. Or it's high on the list of things parents need to do before a child is five...

You can go for quite a long time before the full weight of the consequences become apparent. And people can go quite a long time not realizing they can't just transfer licenses around, or share games willy nilly. A lot of people make convenient and favorable assumptions, and when those are dashed they can't help but wonder, "why not?" Because it doesn't seem like a big deal to them.

It's pretty easy for people to feel like something that inconveniences them is wrong. And it's also pretty easy for people to have self-centered viewpoints. And not care about the concerns of Valve, developers, publishers, the industry, the history of the subject, and all the other facets of the issue they never had to worry about before 4/4/2022.

The way things are today aren't permanent. Gaming will evolve, as will our relationship with technology. Better ways to manage rights may yield systems that negate OP's issue. It's just OP was born fifty years too early to enjoy that. Maybe his grandkids will be entertained by stories about how grandpa had to buy multiple copies of games you had to use your hands to play. "Use your hands? That's like a baby's game!", the grandkids will exclaim. And everyone will laugh how silly 2022 was in hindsight.