Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by yaeger 4545 days ago
Steam on Windows isn't all that great either. It's 2014 now and Steam still ignores the "multi user" aspect of Windows.

Have Steam installed and want to logon automatically so you don't have to enter your password everytime? Great, just tick the appropriate checkbox.

Works great for me, but when my brother uses the PC with his own Windows account, you already know what happens when he tries to start Steam and wants to play using his Steam acount. Correct, he gets auto logged in into my Steam Account. Because as far as Valve is concerned, 1 PC == 1 Steam Install == 1 Steam User.

Granted, Windows wasn't always "multi user" but I think it has been for quite some time now ;) Seeing this and looking into their Linux efforts and their SteamOS for the "Family" and "Living Room" I really see some problems for them unless they finally change this behavior. In a family and in a living room you are bound to have multiple users with Multiple Steam Accounts and especially on a TV, I bet many people would like to log in automatically instead of having to log in manually using a controller to type out the password.

1 comments

Last time I tried, I solved this with just copying the Steam folder and each person starts Steam from their own Steam folder. A lot of wasted space since we got duplicates of all games, but it worked.
windows supports symlinks, you might want to try symlinking the steamapps folder, each steam user has their own settings bits inside steam anyways.