Steam now allows you to copy games over a local network to another PC
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It still doesn't help me with games releasing a 20 GB patch every 7 days unfortunately.
The feature's still there: Right-click a game in your library -> Properties -> Local Files tab -> Backup game files.
It creates sort of an installer with all the files in it. It's less useful in these days of frequent patches though, because the game will still have to download any newer updates after installing.
I used the trick to copy some games to my Steam Deck back in the Fall. I speculated then that they might make this a genuine feature since it's so simple. I'm glad to see it happened.
This method I'm referring to (and probably what they will codify) is much, much faster.
Me. :)
It so often feels like things are moving backward <Old man continues to yell at clouds>.
It still is; I just replaced the boot drive in my PC, pointed Steam at my already-installed library (on a secondary drive) and installed the games with no downloads necessary (other than updates for some games).
EDIT: Of course they already have something similar, https://store.steampowered.com/remoteplay. So "one day" might be sooner than I thought
The only thing close for the PC market I can think of is It Takes Two and its "Friends Pass"
Advance Wars was one of them.
So I just set up a network share on her computer for it and launched it from a network mapped drive.
It just worked. I was kinda surprised. But I guess if the devs don't do anything fancy there's no reason it shouldn't work.
additionally, content-addressing provides another layer of security beyond location addressing. even improperly cached information is as secure as your hashing algorithm.
Either that or game/code assets on large college or corporate campuses.
HTTP is just inherently server-client, decreasing load on servers by sharing between clients was not a design goal.
Sounds simple, but number of cases where this would happen is likely pretty low.
Although IPFS seems to want to implement something like that, and probably much easier to do in a content-addressable way (like IPFS). So content has a hash, and as long as you trust the source of the hash, you can download the content of a hash from anywhere, even your drunk and slightly annoying neighbor that you don't actually trust, because you can verify that you got the right bytes after all.
Bittorrent does it for transfers already, and it works alright, so why not for the web too?
Yes, it was a pain whenever the origin server had misconfigured caching headers. The "force reload bypassing caches" shortcut (Shift-Control-R, or Shift-Click-Reload-Button) was always handy. The move to TLS everywhere, which killed these "transparent" (when they worked) caching proxies, made the web much more stable and predictable.
Some ISPs, on the other hand, did run "transparent" proxies in their networks, causing a range of issues.
Great to see that the steam client now does all this transparently.
The client would pick those up as valid installs as long as the signed in account has those games in their account.
Ironically, in 2023, this still isn’t a solved problem.
I have a MacBook and a Linux PC at home, my work laptop is under Windows and I have a Steam deck my phone is an iPhone (but an Android wouldn’t change anything).
Let’s be honest : sharing a file between those computers is never easy. I still manage to do it but it’s only because I’m "good" at computers.
I’d be totally unable to explain to my mother on the phone how to exchange a file between multiple computers. This adventure always prematurely ends with one or multiple emails to herself.
And to be honest it’s a shame in 2023. Maybe 15 years ago, we had some standard file transfer protocol via Bluetooth which maybe was flaky but was kinda universal and which could have been improved, for example by allowing some standard upgrade over Wi-Fi for compatible devices.
For this I blame Apple who decided to go alone on this path, and the Android stupid UX which somehow decided that disabling Bluetooth and NFC was so useful that you needed to be able to do it with one tap while people didn’t even knew what Bluetooth and NFC meant just because they learnt somewhere that it saved battery juice (spoiler : it hardly saved anything).
tl:dr; long rant about file transfers and the shameful state of standard protocols, sorry I needed to vent my decade long frustration :)
Other than that you need to teach people how to share via the local network which isn’t terrible but requires some basic knowledge to set it up initially.
But overall yes the experience of sharing files between one computer and another can be terrible especially if you don’t want to drastically decrease their security posture.
In a world where it seems like we're constantly downloading more and more, its refreshing to see a company try to curb that.
I don't have a use for it myself, but I think its great.
Though lancache does still have one plus over this method: when I boot from Linux to Windows there's still a chance I might not have to re-download chunks.
This policy moved Steam from "oh it's so convenient" to "ugh, I won't purchase anything ever again on the Steam". Yes, I could create a new account but then I'm locked out form all the games I already purchased.
Now if I'm buying a game the first thing I'm looking is if there's is a non-Steam version.
The issue is without family sharing, you can't share games. But with it enabled if you both own a certain game, it gets confused and only 1 of you can play it at a time.
But if I buy game Y, and play it, steam will then prevent you from playing my game X at the same time.
What's worse, even with hindsight I'm not sure how a parent should organize 2-3 accounts to allow all what "family sharing" implies. And consider that kid now plays some Mario game but in a year or two would play Wolfenstein, so it's not easy to separate by "my" and "their" games.
Ha. Even without family sharing Steam is still the best platform for game purchases. Family sharing not being what you want hardly invalidates the rest of the platform.
I always saw family sharing as something for a family that shares a single PC, letting the family only have to purchase one copy of the game for the household.
FWIW, I think steam is the lesser of many weevils so I deal with it.
How is this better than it was?
It's a lot better in many ways, even if not specifically in sharing.
This is something that Apple gets really right, and that Valve and Microsoft (I don't have experience with Sony or Nintendo family ecosystems) get really wrong.
I can't even buy multiple copies of a co-op game on the family Steam account that the family can use to play together.
The consoles all have a pretty similar system at this point. You get a master console where it can play everything offline/online and any user account can access anything the account set the console as master owns and then you can log into another console and use everything the account owns while online. There might be minor differences among platforms but that's the jist of it. It's kinda bad for Nintendo Switch with the second system being a handheld though. Still better than Steam's. In the good ol' days Sony allowed you to have 5 PS3s and there was no difference but it got abused so they cut it to two.
It's up to the developer as of iOS 14: https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/4/22154178/apple-family-sha...
> The consoles all have a pretty similar system at this point.
Not on Xbox, which is my primary gaming device. Here's how the "home console" feature works today:
> "Xbox home console is an existing feature that allows you to share games and content with other people who sign in to your home console with their profile. However, it’s limited to that device, so friends and family must sign in to the console you identify as your home Xbox to access those benefits."
On the bright side, something new called "Xbox Game Pass Friends & Family" is coming. It provides an Apple-like experience for games on Game Pass, which is a good start:
> "When you share with Friends & Family, the primary account holder and up to four additional members each get their own unique access to all Xbox Game Pass Ultimate games, content, and benefits, regardless of what device they play on. All the people you invite can play at the same time, even the same game."
https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/subscriptions-billing/ma...
As the FAQ I quoted above appears to confirm, you can share games with other profiles, but only on the single device blessed as the "home console".
Of course, you can always pass physical discs around. IIRC, for digital purchases there's a convoluted way to use a single purchase with multiple profiles on multiple devices, but not at the same time. In other words, co-op requires multiple copies of a game. If purchased digitally, they must be bought using separate profiles since one profile can't buy a game twice.
It's quite possible I'm wrong about some facet(s) of this. Hopefully "Xbox Game Pass Friends & Family" fixes this, but if it only fixes the problem for Game Pass games I'm not sure how much value it'll have for me.
What some people do is they set their friend's Xbox as their home console and their friend sets their Xbox as their home console and then they both just stay logged in and online on their respective consoles. This lets them play all their friend's games but they can still play their own.
If you're using Steam Big Picture, you can leave multiple accounts logged in to every device and buy games on them; I did this when I ran fighting game tournaments during COVID--accounts named [channel]1, [channel]2, and so on. (Why you can't do this with the desktop UI is certainly a wart, though.)
Given this, rearchitecting their infrastructure (which pretty universally considers a single account a single active user) for a fairly niche case is probably low on the list.
I'm not sure I understand. Is your idea that instead of per-person accounts, you would create new accounts for subsequent copies, and then the family would work out who logs in as what user?
> Given this, rearchitecting their infrastructure (which pretty universally considers a single account a single active user) for a fairly niche case is probably low on the list.
Families wanting to play co-op games together is a niche?
Yep - that is the intended behavior at present, near as I can tell. Swap accounts as necessary.
> Families wanting to play co-op games together is a niche?
No, but hotdesking and a licensing service is something I don't think I've ever heard friends with kids ask for. (Steam has a licensed/hotdesked model for businesses, where that is a more common thing.)
It's an interesting idea, but I don't want to buy a copy for every family member when we'll never use more than 2 simultaneously.
> No, but hotdesking and a licensing service…
Steam Family Library Sharing already checks that there's an available license, and that it's not currently in use. I just want the ability to buy multiple licenses.
Or better yet, I'd prefer that Valve and other game app stores do what Apple does, and allow users within families to play whatever's "on the shelf", separately or together.
Also kind of frustrated any time I see someone complain about this, there is a horde of people saying "you're wrong and greedy, steam is awesome".
I realize doing this the "right" way might be impractical from a licensing standpoint (or people cheating the system). It still pales in comparison to hard-copies though in this regard.
reading you post again. i think you use family sharing wrong.
> Yes, I could create a new account but then I'm locked out form all the games
family sharing needs multiple account