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I have 1 major issue with Steam, you cannot share individual games in your library and play a different one yourself. If you have 200 games in your library and

I have 1 major issue with Steam, you cannot share individual games in your library and play a different one yourself. If you have 200 games in your library and want to share one with your kids, you cannot play any other game at same time. Interested to see what other criticisms you have.

jasminz 9y ago
Actually, you can (I assume you use Family Sharing). Either you or your kids Steam client needs to go "offline" and you'll be able to play games from same collection simultaneously.
- FuckOffNeemo 9y ago
  I don't believe you can, as of a few weeks ago in any case. When you drop offline, any shared library you had access to will drop off. When changing connectivity during a session, your games terminate within 5 minutes.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
apk-d 9y ago
This is assuming that the game opts into family sharing, or else you don't get to share nil. I've been using Steam as the main means of communication with a lot of people, but these days the chat client is slow, outdated, lacking in basic features and tends to insert annoying redirections before shared links (or remove them outright when you're using a shady site like, I dunno, Google Docs). Hence I'm trying to figure out how to get everyone to migrate to discord.
- kerpl 9y ago
  > Steam [...] the chat client is slow > Hence I'm trying to figure out how to get everyone to migrate to discord. ouch!
  - apk-d 9y ago
    I know why you're being sarcastic, but the Discord client DOES feel more responsive to me in daily usage. Especially if you're planning on clicking any links, which in Steam does a background API call to the Steam servers to check whether you should see the pointless redirection screen. This sometimes takes several seconds, and there's zero UI indication of what's going on. If you're impatient and you click the link several times, it will the open in multiple tabs at the same time. Okay, the chat itself in Steam is pretty fast (unless you attempt to send an emote). The problem is, there's zero message delivery guarantees, and the client doesn't even care to inform you whether the message has been successfully sent. If you're on an unreliable internet connection, your best bet is to close and re-open the chat window to see whether the messages made it to the server in the mini chat log that shows the last 2-5 messages (that's the extent of the client's chat history feature by the way). It's an usability nightmare. This isn't about how fast Discord is but about how bad of a job Valve is doing (I'm not even certain present tense applies here given that the chat client has essentially not received any major new features for like a decade).
    - fro0116 9y ago
      The UX for Discord around group chat is also miles ahead of Steam's. Unlimited history, granular notification options with @mentions, rich media embedding, third party integrations, and seamless voice chat support (and now with video chat and screensharing to boot). Meanwhile Steam's chat client has been stagnating in terms of both features and UX for what feels like a decade.
b0rsuk 9y ago
That's why I largely moved to board games. They are by definition optimized for multiplayer and finished in one seating. Dedicated servers by default. "Spawn" system like in StarCraft 1 by default (one person owns the game, everyone plays). Board games practically don't get outdated. Good ones are still widely played decades later. There's high innovation in game mechanics. Many of them aren't even turn-based. There are dexterity games and real-time games. There are games with simultaneous turns, where you only wait for the slowest player. And you get to make friends.

jasminz 9y ago

Actually, you can (I assume you use Family Sharing). Either you or your kids Steam client needs to go "offline" and you'll be able to play games from same collection simultaneously.

FuckOffNeemo 9y ago
I don't believe you can, as of a few weeks ago in any case. When you drop offline, any shared library you had access to will drop off. When changing connectivity during a session, your games terminate within 5 minutes.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

apk-d 9y ago

This is assuming that the game opts into family sharing, or else you don't get to share nil. I've been using Steam as the main means of communication with a lot of people, but these days the chat client is slow, outdated, lacking in basic features and tends to insert annoying redirections before shared links (or remove them outright when you're using a shady site like, I dunno, Google Docs). Hence I'm trying to figure out how to get everyone to migrate to discord.

kerpl 9y ago
> Steam [...] the chat client is slow > Hence I'm trying to figure out how to get everyone to migrate to discord. ouch!
- apk-d 9y ago
  I know why you're being sarcastic, but the Discord client DOES feel more responsive to me in daily usage. Especially if you're planning on clicking any links, which in Steam does a background API call to the Steam servers to check whether you should see the pointless redirection screen. This sometimes takes several seconds, and there's zero UI indication of what's going on. If you're impatient and you click the link several times, it will the open in multiple tabs at the same time. Okay, the chat itself in Steam is pretty fast (unless you attempt to send an emote). The problem is, there's zero message delivery guarantees, and the client doesn't even care to inform you whether the message has been successfully sent. If you're on an unreliable internet connection, your best bet is to close and re-open the chat window to see whether the messages made it to the server in the mini chat log that shows the last 2-5 messages (that's the extent of the client's chat history feature by the way). It's an usability nightmare. This isn't about how fast Discord is but about how bad of a job Valve is doing (I'm not even certain present tense applies here given that the chat client has essentially not received any major new features for like a decade).
  - fro0116 9y ago
    The UX for Discord around group chat is also miles ahead of Steam's. Unlimited history, granular notification options with @mentions, rich media embedding, third party integrations, and seamless voice chat support (and now with video chat and screensharing to boot). Meanwhile Steam's chat client has been stagnating in terms of both features and UX for what feels like a decade.

b0rsuk 9y ago

That's why I largely moved to board games. They are by definition optimized for multiplayer and finished in one seating. Dedicated servers by default. "Spawn" system like in StarCraft 1 by default (one person owns the game, everyone plays). Board games practically don't get outdated. Good ones are still widely played decades later. There's high innovation in game mechanics. Many of them aren't even turn-based. There are dexterity games and real-time games. There are games with simultaneous turns, where you only wait for the slowest player. And you get to make friends.