How to stop screen from being unwillingly taken over by Steam?

August 18, 2023 10:50 AM

I share a Steam login with my kid. A couple times in the last few weeks, she has tried to start playing a game with her friends, and somehow it has involuntarily come up, fullscreen, on my screen - taking over the mouse, etc. This would be funny except it usually happens in class, or client/supervisor meetings. How do I stop it and prevent it from ever happening again?

1. I would be willing to partition our Steam account and give her her games, but Steam does not seem to allow this option, nor would Family Sharing allow her to keep progress on games or history.

2. This seems to be happening when she is trying to play games with friends.

3. She has no idea why this is happening either, but reported that *she* thought her computer was being taken over because apparently when I tried to move my mouse, it moved *her* mouse.

4. I don't want to go to Steam about this because the first thing they will say is "you're not supposed to be sharing logins".

posted by corb to Technology (7 answers total)

Take it from me, the sooner you get your kids separate Steam accounts, the better (I speak as someone who's just had to bite the bullet after 5 years of being kicked off games by my kids). Partitioning the account is impossible, and the Family thing has never been of more than marginal use.

I think your kid is using Steam Link with the Remote Play Together feature. She's probably linking to the wrong PC when trying to connect to he friends (although I'm a little hazy on how exactly that works). I think turning off 'Remote Play' in your Steam settings should fix it.
posted by pipeski at 11:08 AM on August 18, 2023

This sounds like the Steam remote play feature. There’s two versions, “Remote Play Together”, which lets you play games with other people, and then “Remote Play Anywhere” which lets you play your own games, running on one computer and streaming to a different device.

It sounds like maybe she’s trying to use the “Together” feature but accidentally launching the game from your machine instead? There’s instructions on how to turn off the streaming-between-your-own-machines version at that link.
posted by firefleet at 11:12 AM on August 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

You could also just make sure that you're fully logged out of Steam (including the Steam service icon that might be running in your system tray) except when actively playing games. You might also look at disabling Steam from automatically launching at system startup, etc.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:15 AM on August 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

If a game isn't installed but is on another pc on the network it will come up with a "stream" button instead of "play" which is easy to click if you're not paying attention. If you disable "Remote Play" in the steam options on the PC you don't want to be interrupted on that will stop that happening, however:

As pipeski says, give them their own account ASAP - otherwise it just gets harder the longer you wait.

With family sharing you should be able to let them keep playing most of the games on your account (when you're not playing), and they will have their own saves/progress. They won't get trading cards from family-shared-games, and maybe not achievements but normal game saves and steam cloud seem to work.
posted by samj at 11:33 AM on August 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

on rereading - if there's any games they really want to keep the progress on, it's generally possible to copy save files manually.
posted by samj at 11:37 AM on August 18, 2023

I agree with pipeski by the way. At some point, you'll need to rip off the band aid and separate out accounts, and the longer you wait, the worse it will be. It is going to be an awful thing, particularly because I know kids aren't super understanding about things like this all the time but it is the way.
posted by kbanas at 11:55 AM on August 18, 2023

I'm not sure if this is too obvious but maybe try exiting Steam altogether before classes or meetings? You can do this via the Steam > Exit menu item, and without Steam running there's no way for it to take over anything. It should stay logged-in when you relaunch it even.

Seconding separate accounts with family sharing for the long-term though.
posted by Aleyn at 11:22 PM on August 18, 2023