9 replies to this topic

[MSosa01]

I recently purchased Civ V and several expansions through Steam, first time using the service. I had been buying games through the App Store and placing them in a Games folder so that other users of my iMac (kids) could easily find and play them. With Steam however I do not see Civ V anywhere, I have to open Steam and log on to play it. This is an issue, as I want other user accounts on my iMac to be able to use the software that I purchase! What's the point of spending $50 on Civ V and DLC if only I can use it? Letting other users into my account for purposes of gaming is not a good idea either.

So, is there a way to share Steam games? If not I will not be buying games from the service again.

[DaveyJJ]

Don't this as gospel but I've not found one. My Steam account has been basically taken over by my 13 year old because of their restrictions on multiple logins into one account. You could install Steam on their account and them log them in under your Steam name. (Certainly one of the frustrating things about multiple user accounts, along with iPhoto, grrr)

[Hansi]

Yes, just log into Steam on each user. But symlink ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/ on each to a central location, but only one person can be logged in at a time.

[MSosa01]

How does this symlink work exactly? If I could link Steam to one central location at least we can avoid duplicating each game. Civ V is a 5 gigabyte game. I'll just have each user open to my Steam account, with the limitation of only one logged on a time. I want to use one version of Civ V though so we can compare results and track performance.

Honestly this Steam thing sucks. I did not like having to create multiple accounts to play, or having to log on to Steam to play Civ V, and now I can't even share my games. I wish I had know this crap ahead of time. Steam still hasn't responded to my email. I wonder if I could still get a refund and just get the App Store version. Why the hell would anyone want to have their games dependent on some third party service?

[Marathon4ever]

You should be able to use OS X hard links to share games, but I'm not entirely sure that will work.

I believe you need to use Terminal to create hard links, btw.

[MSosa01]

Steam sent me a reply:

"Games activated through Steam are registered to the Steam account, not the computer on which the game is installed.

As long as you have access to the account on which the game is registered, the game will be available for you to download, install, and play in your Library list regardless of the computer or user account you are logged in on.

A Steam account cannot be logged in to more than one place at a time.

If you wish to play Steam games on multiple computers at the same time, you will need a separate Steam account for each computer, as well as separately purchased games for each account."

I'm sure this service is useful for many gamers, but I for one will not be using it again. Not having support for multiple users is simply not family friendly.

[Hansi]

To share the data, move /Users/YOU/Library/Application Support/Steam/ to /Users/Shared/Library/Application Support/Steam/ and then in each account run this in the terminal:

if [ -d "~/Library/Application Support/Steam/" ]; then rm -rf "~/Library/Application Support/Steam/" fi; ln -s "/Users/Shared/Library/Application Support/Steam/" "~/Library/Application Support/Steam/"

[Janichsan]

Hansi, on 16 September 2011 - 11:52 AM, said:

To share the data, move /Users/YOU/Library/Application Support/Steam/ to /Users/Shared/Library/Application Support/Steam/ and then in each account run this in the terminal:

Doesn't sharing the Steam folder wreak havoc to the users' permissions?

[Hansi]

Well I don't think there should be much issues, if any just run chmod -R 777 /Users/Shared/Library/Application Support/Steam/
and problem solved.

[Tesseract]

MSosa01, on 15 September 2011 - 12:05 PM, said:

Why the hell would anyone want to have their games dependent on some third party service?

Because of the sales. I don't buy anything on Steam if it's available elsewhere for the same price, but they regularly have discounts that are just too good to pass up. And of course there are some games that are Steam exclusives like Valve's own.