2 steam accounts, 1 PC

[Homerboy]

Any tricks here?

My daughter wants a few games for the holidays and I want to set up her Steam account on our main/shared PC in the house -- which is where my Steam account is as well.

I assume just under her Windows login open up a Steam account for her. Buy the games through there etc?

Can you "gift" games anonymously? It'd be neat if they came to her "From Santa"

 

[KaOTiK]

2 accounts on 1 PC is no problem, you just can't be logged into both accounts at once on 1 PC. You can make a Steam account just like you normally would since all you need to sign into Steam is whatever the accounts name and password is when you made the account for it.

As for gifting. It has a From box where you can put Santa, it also lets you leave a message and a To box for who it is for. But it will show the username of who sent it and that can not be hidden.

 

[biostud]

Just disable auto-login, and create an account for her.

Just write: "Santa asked me to give this game to you..." or something similar.

 

[Elixer]

I wonder if you can put both accounts in offline mode ?

 

[Homerboy]

2 accounts on 1 PC is no problem, you just can't be logged into both accounts at once on 1 PC. You can make a Steam account just like you normally would since all you need to sign into Steam is whatever the accounts name and password is when you made the account for it.

As for gifting. It has a From box where you can put Santa, it also lets you leave a message and a To box for who it is for. But it will show the username of who sent it and that can not be hidden.

Thanks for the info.
I googled "Steam gifts from Santa" and ended up with this link:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2283119

basically exactly what I want to do... "Surprise!! Santa sent you a gift via Steam"

Looks like the best bet is to create a "Santa" Account, and then gift it to her from there.

 

[darkewaffle]

I don't think it has anything to do with your Windows login, just turn off "remember my credentials" and each of you will probably have to login upon opening steam.

And I think you can see who the games came from, though you could make a secondary steam account with some sort of santa related account name though lol

 

[Barfo]

if daughter >= 18 then request pics;

 

[SMOGZINN]

I just did this at my house, and it does not work very well at all. Steam and all the games are installed in the same folders no matter what Windows or Steam account you are logged in with.
So what happens is that it will come up and try to auto-login to your steam no matter what Windows account you are logged in with. Even if you log into a separate steam account on the separate Windows account it will have all the steam games from both steam accounts in the games library each steam and windows account and show them downloaded and available. If you try to run a game you haven't purchased with that account you get a error message. Per Valve there is no way around that, just put games in categories.

If you want to auto-logon based on accounts there is a partial hack, you can create a shortcut with command line parameters and put it in your startup directory.

The parameters are:
-silent (stops the splash screen, but not the login screen)
-login %u %p

So if you account name is "JonDoe" with password "pass123" it would be

"{Path}\Steam.exe" -silent -login JonDoe Pass123

Steam will still popup and ask for username and password, but will then continue on and login automatically. Note that this is stored in plain text, so is not secure at all.

 

[biostud]

if daughter >= 18 then request pics;

and specially if she still believes in Santa

 

[Dankk]

2 steam accounts 1 PC

:sneaky:

 

[Homerboy]

if daughter >= 18 then request pics;

Do you want me to come out there and punch you myself? Or would you like to self-administer?

 

[KaOTiK]

After said punch, will we then be getting said pics?

 

[frozentundra123456]

I wonder if you can put both accounts in offline mode ?

Two accounts on one computer is no problem for sure. I have one account for my grandson and one for myself on the same computer. I am not sure about this, but I believe you could not have both accounts in offline mode at the same time. Well, technically both could be off line, but if you want to switch accounts to play a game on the other account, I believe you have to briefly go online to do the switch.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I just did this at my house, and it does not work very well at all. Steam and all the games are installed in the same folders no matter what Windows or Steam account you are logged in with.
So what happens is that it will come up and try to auto-login to your steam no matter what Windows account you are logged in with. Even if you log into a separate steam account on the separate Windows account it will have all the steam games from both steam accounts in the games library each steam and windows account and show them downloaded and available. If you try to run a game you haven't purchased with that account you get a error message. Per Valve there is no way around that, just put games in categories.

If you want to auto-logon based on accounts there is a partial hack, you can create a shortcut with command line parameters and put it in your startup directory.

The parameters are:
-silent (stops the splash screen, but not the login screen)
-login %u %p

So if you account name is "JonDoe" with password "pass123" it would be

"{Path}\Steam.exe" -silent -login JonDoe Pass123

Steam will still popup and ask for username and password, but will then continue on and login automatically. Note that this is stored in plain text, so is not secure at all.

All I did is create 2 steam accounts under the same windows user. I log in to one account and automatically stay on that account when I open steam. If I or someone else wants to play a game on the other account, just go to the "switch user" on the Steam menu, log out, and log in to the other account. If you dont want a younger person to have access to one of the accounts, just dont give them the password. And yes, some games show up on both accounts, but you can only play them on the account under which they were purchased. This seems like it could have been set up better by Steam, but I dont see it as a major problem.

 

[Homerboy]

oh FFS... I'm too assuming of Steam. Apparently Minecraft is not, and never will be available on Steam. OOPS! That's her #1 request! All this is for nothing.

Heh.

 

[EDUSAN]

well.... homerboy... it could be worse... she could like SIMS

im fine with a nice chick that likes minecraft... pics plz =P

 

[rivethead]

All I did is create 2 steam accounts under the same windows user. I log in to one account and automatically stay on that account when I open steam. If I or someone else wants to play a game on the other account, just go to the "switch user" on the Steam menu, log out, and log in to the other account. If you dont want a younger person to have access to one of the accounts, just dont give them the password. And yes, some games show up on both accounts, but you can only play them on the account under which they were purchased. This seems like it could have been set up better by Steam, but I dont see it as a major problem.

I recently had this situation at my house as well. My 13 year old had his own user account/steam account. And I had mine.

It worked fine EXCEPT for any games we both had in our library. For example, I bought Torchlight. He bought Torchlight. After he bought it, I was no longer able to play Torchlight in my account. Valve was never able to tell me why or fix the situation (but to be fair, I didn't press the issue....I was pretty much done with Torchlight and had moved on to other games).

But for this reason I didn't buy Sniper Ghost Warrior (because he already owned it). I just didn't want to take the chance.

I resolved this by building him his own system last year and deleting his entire user account off my computer (but I had to manually go into the steam folder and delete his Steam ID account folder).

Long story short.....I don't think Steam has worked all the bugs out of the 2 steam accounts/1 PC thing. I wouldn't do it.

 

[Homerboy]

well.... homerboy... it could be worse... she could like SIMS

im fine with a nice chick that likes minecraft... pics plz =P

Well her 4th grade pictures should be delivered soon...

 

[JujuFish]

oh FFS... I'm too assuming of Steam. Apparently Minecraft is not, and never will be available on Steam. OOPS! That's her #1 request! All this is for nothing.

Heh.

In case you're wondering, this is the last thing I saw on why Minecraft isn't on Steam (from Notch):

Being on Steam limits a lot of what we’re allowed to do with the game, and how we’re allowed to talk to our users. We (probably?) wouldn’t be able to, say, sell capes or have a map market place on minecraft.net that works with steam customers in a way that keeps Valve happy. It would effectively split the Minecraft community into two parts, where only some of the players can access all of the weird content we want to add to the game.

 

[Wyndru]

I know this has nothing to do with steam, but I think you can buy physical game cards for minecraft too. I thought I saw them at walmart. You just buy 1 card, and when she opens it she can use it to create her account and download the client.

Here they are:
https://minecraft.net/prepaid

 

[Homerboy]

I know this has nothing to do with steam, but I think you can buy physical game cards for minecraft too. I thought I saw them at walmart. You just buy 1 card, and when she opens it she can use it to create her account and download the client.

Here they are:
https://minecraft.net/prepaid

OH HELL!! That's PERFECT!!! Thanks!!!

 

[SMOGZINN]

In case you're wondering, this is the last thing I saw on why Minecraft isn't on Steam (from Notch):

But they can do it with Xbox? That seems wrong.

 

[Homerboy]

But they can do it with Xbox? That seems wrong.

I saw that post from Notch too while googling around as to why its not on Steam, and that was the 1st thing I thought of too "Best XBox gives you that freedom?"