Gaming How far does Steam's No DRM and account management go?

[Gaisuto]

Game of the Subject: Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II
I know Steam's main purpose is easy game management, with one of it's driving points being playing their games from any computer. I just started to use Steam recently and I've never tried using it like this, wondering how it works.

My friend bought DOW2 the other day. We planned on hanging out soon for us to possibly LAN it so he gave me his log in info to download it and have it installed myself ahead of time. It's pretty much done. How will the playing of this game be handled?

I know the game goes online through Games for Windows Live. Can I just run this game from the Steamsapps folder to run it out of Steam, so I could still go online with my Gamertag? Or does he absolutely need to be logged in to Steam to do anything? What about the single player? Hell because this is what we're doing this for, will we even be able to LAN it?

 

[CockroachMan]

I think it depends on the game.

I know that Team Fortress 2 and Half Life 2 can be played by 3 different computers at the same time on LAN with the same steam login.

 

[Neko]

You guys can log in at the same time BUT you can't play online at the same time. LAN should work though. (atleast it worked for me and my brother)

 

[Gaisuto]

Okay, I tried closing Steam out right before launching it out of curiosity and it just loaded up Steam in his log in. I'd rather not rush ahead and try it out without explaining it to him.

So you're positive that we can both be playing the game on his Steam account at the exact same time? But one of us would have to be doing something like Single Player while the other can go online? Even from two different locations?

*EDIT: That can't be right. I was on his account playing the game. He woke up and logged in, and it immediately booted me out of Steam and then thus booted me out of the game.

*EDIT again: Okay, it just booted me to offline mode, as you said. Nevermind. Sounds about right so far.

 

[Trolly]

I know that Team Fortress 2 and Half Life 2 can be played by 3 different computers at the same time on LAN with the same steam login.

Can they!? Awesome! LAN with my brother on TF2 it is

.
Well done for finding the joys of Steam aha, it's an under-rated platform.

 

[UltraMagnus]

Steam's No DRM and account management

I thought steam is DRM?

 

[dark42]

When playing games on a LAN what you should do is get a Steam emulator/launcher such as UCL (Universal Content Launcher) (http://www.ucl-team.com/wordpress/) or SteamBuster (google it). They won't let you play online but they will launch your GCFs/NCFs so you can play offline singleplayer/LAN. We do this at my school to play Counter-Strike Source as using Steam would be a major no-no. I suggest trying UCL first as SteamBuster is getting a little outdated.