this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
97 points (94.5% liked)
Games
37470 readers
1247 users here now
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Weekly Threads:
Rules:
-
Submissions have to be related to games
-
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
-
No excessive self-promotion
-
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
-
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
-
No linking to piracy
More information about the community rules can be found here and here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think you can argue if Steam does the whole sharing thing better than Sony or Microsoft. On Playstation and Xbox you can just by one copy of a game, but play it simultaniously with someone else, but it seems like that's limited to one other console (setting the home console).
On Steam you need one copy for every accout playing the game, but you can have 6 accounts in your family, and unlimited devices. Without family share, your own account can only play on one device at a time, but then, why not just make a new Steam account and join a family.
The virtual game cards from Nintendo are also like Steam, since they need one game copy for each player, but also only on one device.
Seems to me like Nintendo is not as good as the others, when it comes to sharing digital games. Sharing physical is of course still possible and easy on console.
If we still need to buy one copy of a gamer per simultaneous player,.then the rest of the differences are just ceremony.
Nothing indicates that moving a Nintendo digital card requires uninstalling the game locally. It just, like steam, does a DRM check to see if it's being played elsewhere.
I am not 100% sure on this but i belive that you could buy 1 game and then share it with your family members on switch and everyone (except the owner) could play it at the same time. This is now changed with virtual cards and only 1 person can play a game at any one time. Note that i do only own one switch so I am not a 100% sure about this.
Steam lets anyone in family play anything except playing the same game as the owner iirc. So it is very friendly to sharing whereas just a year ago or something the owner of the game you wanted to "borrow" had to not be playing anything for you to be able to play it.
Nintendo made sharing less friendly. Steam made it more friendly. Am I wrong?
I think the only thing that's worse with the new Steam system is that everyone has to be in the same country.