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Comment by eropple | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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.

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> If you're using Steam Big Picture, you can leave multiple accounts logged in to every device and buy games on them…

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?

> 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?

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.)

> Swap accounts as necessary.

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.

Im not saying that you’re wrong for wanting to be able to buy multiple copies but I’m curious as to what you’re reasoning is for not just having separate accounts for the people in your family.

Family members do have separate accounts, and I'd very much like to keep it that way. That is, I don't want to buy a copy for Billy's account and then another for Suzy's account — I want to buy, say, one additional copy (license, really) for the family library so that anybody can co-op with each other.

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