Help Steam questions

[Jupitus]

Hey guys - so I have a Steam ID and all my games installed on machine A. My sons have been playing games using my steam ID on this PC, and hence some games have achievements they have got to (such as COD MW2 rank etc) which they would like to keep.

Q1 is can my son create himself his own steam ID and use it on this machine, playing the games I have installed?

Q2 is if I get another machine, knowing that a game can't be run legally twice of course, can they have a steam ID of their own on that machine and get copies of the games I have to play, or do we need to buy all new copies?

Q3 is can a game's 'ownership' be transferred to a different steam ID allowing them to inherit achievements?

You get the gist of it, I guess, so suggestions, ideas or tech knowledge would all be most welcome

TIA!

 

[kirennia]

Hey guys - so I have a Steam ID and all my games installed on machine A. My sons have been playing games using my steam ID on this PC, and hence some games have achievements they have got to (such as COD MW2 rank etc) which they would like to keep.

Q1 is can my son create himself his own steam ID and use it on this machine, playing the games I have installed?

Q2 is if I get another machine, knowing that a game can't be run legally twice of course, can they have a steam ID of their own on that machine and get copies of the games I have to play, or do we need to buy all new copies?

Q3 is can a game's 'ownership' be transferred to a different steam ID allowing them to inherit achievements?

You get the gist of it, I guess, so suggestions, ideas or tech knowledge would all be most welcome

TIA!

I've currently got my steam games installed on both my main machine as well as my laptop and I don't believe there is any issue with that. Should you attempt to log in two computers at the same time to the same account, I think it'd stop you pretty sharpish. By this merit, it depends on whether you'd want to share your steam time with them or not.

As for steam game transferals, if the games IDs are stored via steam, you wont be able to transfer them. Similarly, if you have a game linked to your account, you will not be able to transfer it; this is to stop a potential second hand game market through steam thus costing them a large number of sales. It'll also keep the legalities very concise for them.

Unfortunately, I think that's a total of 3 'no' answers.

 

[xane]

It is perfectly legal to use the same Steam account on more than one machine, and then install all the games on each machine.

You can force Steam into "offline" mode, and as long as only one machine is "online" at a time, the games are all available on each machine they are installed on and can all be played simultaneously. Needless to say you can only play one of them online at a time, however, some games allow LAN play with only one machine "online" (normally has to be the server).

Games and achievements, etc, are linked to one account. A second account will have to purchase all the games again, I don't think you can transfer ownership or achievements.

 

[MYstIC G]

No, if he wants his own account he'd have to buy the games. Hopefully this is something Steam won't change as if it did doubtless it wouldn't be long before games would start to go missing from one account to another.

 

[Yaka]

often wondered what would happed if my main pc and my htpc both logged into steam, would that equal perma bann or some thing?

i mainly play recent graphics demanding games on main pc, older or less gfx intensive games are normal pld on my htpc in the sitting room

 

[nath]

Nah, you simply can't log in to Steam if you're logged in elsewhere. However if you set up one to play in offline mode it'd probably work.

 

[xane]

When you login to Steam, if you're already logged in elsewhere it logs you out.

You can configure Steam to always start in offline mode, it wont try to log in, you need to log in to install and update games, and the Steam GUI itself.

I have three PCs and three laptops all able to use Steam games from the one account.

In some circumstances you can have a LAN game, for certain games, i.e. Counterstrike, the "server" machine has to be logged in to Steam, but the others can be in offline mode and play, however, "your mileage my vary" depending on the game.