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It's also worth noting that Steam brings in some of the tactics of the untrustworthy world of commercial software. By requiring the installation of Steam to in
by II2II 5y ago
It's also worth noting that Steam brings in some of the tactics of the untrustworthy world of commercial software. By requiring the installation of Steam to install games purchased through Steam, they are forcing the installation of a marketing tool. While Steam may be mostly benevolent at present and they have made enormous contributions to Linux for gamers, it doesn't change the fact that they are using their position to sell people more games when they go to launch a game. It also doesn't diminish the possibility that Steam could integrate user-hostile features at any time. (Remember, there was a time when Google was considered benevolent.)
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y agoUnfortunately steam also limits library usage to one person at a time. For those with hundreds of games, this is very limiting nowdays if you have a family. I switched to GoG whenever possible.
- shoemakersteve 5y agoSteam actually has a family share feature, and while you "can't" play games if your library is being used by someone else, you can just go into offline mode to bypass that. So if you want to play single-player games, that works pretty well.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y agoI'm aware and that's a bug, not a feature. If you are online and go Offline with the explicit button (instead of unplug the cable) and actually keep the cable connected (not sure if LAN or internet at this point) and start a second Steam client and use the library (not sure if online or offline for the second one), the offline one will not be able to use the library because already in use. The workaround is, indeed, pull the cable or firewall steam, go offline, plug the cable. So the concern becomes "what if the protection becomes stronger".
- swiley 5y agoI used to live somewhere with terrible internet. Offline mode seems to work about 10% of the time and your better off pretending it doesn't exist.
- jandrese 5y agoThis is my #1 complaint with Steam. I have 3 kids in the house on the family share thing, and if any one of them plays a game it locks everybody else out the entire library. I don't think Valve understands what a family is. I think Valve's definition of a family is one guy who owns a whole bunch of different computers that he wants to flit between. Maybe this is what family is to a Valve employee? I don't know. Most streaming services allow a small but reasonable number of concurrent connections. Usually around 5. Why does Valve insist on locking out my library of games that I paid for when one person has a game open? It makes no sense. I wouldn't complain if the rule was you couldn't have more than one copy of a particular game open (maybe have an option to buy multiple copies for the library?), but if someone is playing L4D2 they shouldn't lock someone else out of playing HalfLife 2.
- traverseda 5y agoI think you can also use steamcmd to download games? Not sure about launching.
- II2II 5y agoI tried looking into this a couple of years back, and it looks like Steam has to run in the background for games that link to a library that offers Steam integration. I concluded that continuing to research a path that offered an uncertain conclusion was too much trouble, then switched to purchasing games from DRM-free vendors. The end result is saving a lot of money. Alas, that didn't correspond to a diminished amount of time spent gaming.