ValveSoftware
Turning on Steam Deck almost always closes Steam on PC now
Your system information
- Steam client version: 1672959431 / STEAMCLIENT020
- SteamOS version: 3.4.5 20221228.2
- Opted into Steam client beta?: [Yes/No] Yes
- Opted into SteamOS beta?: [Yes/No] Yes
- Have you checked for updates in Settings > System?: [Yes/No] Yes
Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:
Describe what you expected should happen and what did happen.
It used to be, that when trying to launch a game on the Steam Deck, Steam on the PC would ask me to refresh my login / close one of the games to continue. Annoying, but makes sense from a DRM perspective. However, now, when turning on my Steam Deck in the morning or even when launching a non-steam game on the Deck, sometimes Steam on the PC will prompt me to refresh my log-in. The worse part is even when I do refresh my log-in on PC, it still kicks me out of my game and I just lost progress because of it. In the scenario that just happened, I was NOT launching any game from the Steam Deck, I turned it on and went to go download Soul Hackers 2 for my trip this weekend.
Steps for reproducing this issue:
I wouldn't know how to provide the steps on this one, as this is new behavior after the most recent update I received, and doesn't happen every single time; but it happens enough that it is extremely annoying.
Hello @SentaiBrad, this reads like an issue with the Steam client instead of SteamOS as a platform, so I've transferred this issue report to the steam-for-linux issue tracker.
Hello @SentaiBrad, this reads like an issue with the Steam client instead of SteamOS as a platform, so I've transferred this issue report to the steam-for-linux issue tracker.
Ah, thank you.
It keeps happening, fairly consistently. I was playing a non-steam game last night, and put my Deck into sleep mode. Today, I turned on a game through Steam on my Windows Desktop. While that was on (an Idle Game) I turned back on my Deck and it resumed the non-steam game. Steam then prompted me to refresh my login on the Desktop.
I caught it this time before it kicked me out of my game, but there have been instances where Steam doesn't prompt me and It kicks me out of a game. Either way, this behavior has clearly been altered from even a month or two ago when I did not get this at all unless I tried to play two Steam games at the same time. Extremely frustrating and It now feels like the DRM aspect is getting in the way of enjoying my devices and games.
Can we get some kind of an update on this, please? I was just kicked out of a CSGO competetive game today (and logged out of Steam) because I woke up my Deck to try downloading a game for later.
Not sure if related that I was playing Life is Strange on the Deck last night so it was running on it when I woke it up, but not acceptable either way...
When I re-logged in on PC and restarted CSGO, then and put Deck to sleep and then woke it up again, Deck had a notification shown that I'm running a game on PC and if I tap OK it will stop the game on PC. More reasonable I guess, but pointless if I'm gonna get completely kicked out of the game in the first place.
Also it was not possible to do anything else on the deck while having the notification shown, not even to close the game
Then after putting it to sleep and waking it up again, the Deck froze with a black screen and rebooted, which resulted in me losing progress
Any updates on this? @kisak-valve do you maybe have any insights?
I'm having the same issue, my gf was just playing a game on her desktop and I woke up my deck where she was still logged in, just to change the account to mine and play. She was logged out on her desktop immediately, even without me running anything via her account on the deck. Simply waking it up was enough. Easy to reproduce.
Log in on steam deck Put steam deck to sleep Run steam game on desktop with the same account (keep it running) Wake up steam deck
I would expect the desktop app to only log me out when I run a steam game on the deck (because of DRM and account sharing of course), but not when I just wake it up without doing anything. I don't even have the opportunity to change the account on the deck.
Hi, kisak-valve!
I am also having this issue quite frequently now. It was never an issue before the most recent update a few days ago for SteamOS, and I'm assuming whatever else gets updated alongside that.
The issue is as above, except I am definitely not playing any Steam specific games. In fact, I am playing ES-DE (EmulationStation) almost exclusively on my Deck, which is obviously not a Steam game.
The reason this is an issue to me, is because I use my desktop to play more demanding games, and the Deck to play retro games. When I am in the middle of a game on Steam desktop, and go to relax in bed, and continue the game from desktop through streaming, it completely, without even ASKING, just closes out of the desktop game. All this, because I usually leave my retro games in suspend, since losing their progress isn't really important to me, UNLIKE the desktop, where I DO mind losing my progress, and have TWICE now.
I beg you to keep looking into this, and to provide a fix, as it is kind of silly that a non-Steam game is killing my desktop game, which I was just about to stream from the desktop to the Deck.
Hello @TomEFFENJones, friendly reminder that I'm a moderator for Valve's issue trackers on Github, and not a Steam developer myself. We'll need to hear from a Steam dev if/when there is progress on this issue.
CAN VALVE PLEASE FIX THIS ALREADY?
I GOT KICKED FROM 2 COMPETITIVE PC GAMES TODAY ONLY BECAUSE I WOKE UP MY DECK TWICE FROM SLEEP WHILE IT WAS ONLY RUNNING HEROIC GAME LAUNCHER (for updates, while I was dead).
Steam forcefully completely shut down the game, then quit itself too.
I had to restart Steam on PC and restart the online game each time.
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY STUPID. FIX THIS BEHAVIOUR VALVE. It's been a year without any updates.
@SentaiBrad if possible , please add to the description the reproducing steps from 1532 except that it's valid for any game not just non-steam as stated in the issue, I encounter this issue on a constant basis so it's not "almost" always it's just always and I just did this: 1)started buckshot roulette on steamdeck 2)put the deck to sleep 3)started katana zero on PC 4)woke up steam deck
as soon as I got wifi connection on steamdeck the steamclient just closed the game and itself on PC. hopefully if we get a dev to look on it at least he'll know how to reproduce it, from my experience devs don't take tickets if the issue is poorly defined or missing the steps to reproduce the issue, they take something else that is decently described (easy win) or critical. But I'm really wondering why no one is looking into this , I'm pretty sure Valve should've encountered this issue if they use the same accounts for both their PC and their steamdecks
@kisak-valve if you are able to modify the issue description maybe you could help with adding the steps in case @SentaiBrad is unreachable, the issue is really ugly and it's a shame that it's open for so long without any attention.
note that it is not even necessary to have a game started on the steam deck! that's the important thing. it even logs you out on the other device by just launching the deck without anything running!
This also happens on non steam games, today I got logged out off Warframe on PC when I woke my deck up from sleep with a non steam game emulator open on the deck.
This also happens on the Windows client. I turned on my Steam Deck which had a non-Steam game running, and the Windows client just killed the Steam game I was running and shut down Steam without any warning. On my Bazzite install (in game mode), I'd expect some sort of confirmation screen.
Ideally i'd be able to have two computers running things at the same time.
Yea, this still happens, and it is odd that there has been zero traction. Turning on a device should not prompt me to be kicked out of a game on my PC. Non-Steam Games and Steam Games should also be able to be played at the same time without using offline mode.
I was also going to originally say I understand why you don't want someone to be able to play 2 steam games at once, EXCEPT, that you can 100% launch 2 steam games on the same platform at once. The major difference being that one is my PC, and one is my Steam Deck, and that fails, regardless of Steam or non-Steam game.
So the root cause seems to be the Steam Deck regardless. It feels like DRM settings are turned way up, and the second you power on the Steam Deck it tries to overwrite any other session on another PC if a game happens to be running.
Since steam family sharing now allows two different games from the same library to be played at the same time, can you please just let us play a game on the steam deck at the same time as playing a different game on PC?
Would love to see traction on this, just lost some progress in For the King today because of it.
This is a major hassle - if you use Steam for non-game products, and you're in the middle of working on something, and casually pick up your deck for a game, you can lose active work.
Despite the work arounds available but none of them are great, especially as it relegates the Deck to a second class device (like, ONLY being in offline mode). Booting out of the same game is fine, but not the client itself.
I don't get dumped out of Play Store, just because I bring up a video on my tablet.
