this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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Steam Deck

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A place to discuss and support all things Steam Deck.

Replacement for r/steamdeck_linux.

As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
[Flair] My post title

The following is a list of suggested flairs:
[Discussion] - General discussion.
[Help] - A request for help or support.
[News] - News about the deck.
[PSA] - Sharing important information.
[Game] - News / info about a game on the deck.
[Update] - An update to a previous post.
[Meta] - Discussion about this community.

Some more Steam Deck specific flairs:
[Boot Screen] - Custom boot screens/videos.
[Selling] - If you are selling your deck.

These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Have they solved the issue that multiple people can't be playing at the same time, or the same game at the same time?

I don't even do families. One of us just goes into offline mode for the time. Slightly obnoxious.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The “same game at the same time” part is a licensing issue. It won’t ever be “solved” because it would get Steam into legal trouble to do so, just like the Internet Archive recently FAFO’ed. In order for two people to play the same game at the same time, you need to own two licenses for said game.

But it does solve the issue of multiple people using the same library at the same time. Now your family members don’t get booted off of Skyrim just because you launched Persona. It basically combines your libraries, so any of you can choose any of the listed games to play at any time. Just like having a physical shelf full of CD cases.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Yup.
The previous family share was gathering your library of games with the "console" in a single box and giving that entire to your friend. If you want to play anything, you need the box back.
Steam Families is now a common bookshelf, grab a game if it's there and play.

Now we just need a way to use that shelf with the same account so I don't get booted from my steam deck games just because I left something running on my PC and vice versa.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Now we just need a way to use that shelf with the same account so I don't get booted from my steam deck games just because I left something running on my PC and vice versa.

AFAIK, this is also a licensing issue. When Steam was launching, game publishers were concerned that people would simply share an account. So part of Steam’s licensing agreement is that the same account can’t have games (even different games) running on two machines at the same time. It’s specifically to prevent account sharing, because people would just share an account with their friends; Booting them out of their game every time their buddy boots something up is a pretty effective countermeasure.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Previously a family member could only play your shared library if you weren't playing any game.

With this new steam families, they can play any game except the game you're actively playing (unless the family collectively owns multiple copies). So if me and my son want to play Lethal Company together we need two copies.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Cool. Well that is certainly a step forward. Thanks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

It just basically combines your libraries now. So if the license is in use, nobody else can use it unless there are multiple licenses. Offline will still work for your own games and you can choose the best version to play. E.g. I have Isaac but only 1 dlc while my gf has all of the dlc so I can just play her version when she's not playing it.