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I want to play some of the Steam dating sims, but I don't want to get derisive messages from my Steam friends when they see messages like "Nzall has started playing Tank Dating Simulator". Do the Steam rules allow me to create a second Steam account that I can play games on I'd rather not announce to my friends that I own them?

Nzall
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    Tank Dating Simulator ... that is an unusual combination of words. – Vegard Mar 15 '16 at 15:53
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    @Vegard it randomly appeared in my frontpage caroussel. It appears to be a parody of the high school dating sim genre with a barrage of WW2 references. – Nzall Mar 15 '16 at 16:10
  • @Vegard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG18hZYEBj0 – Comic Sans Seraphim Mar 15 '16 at 16:29
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    It seems to directly influenced by Hatoful Boyfriend, a visual novel where a human girl attends a school populated by pigeons, and Kantai Collection (aka Kancolle) a browser game where World War II combat ships are personified by cute anime girls. The former may be the most popular Japanese visual novel published in the west, while the later is only available in Japan, but immensely popular there. –  Mar 15 '16 at 16:44
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    I actually own Hatoful Boyfriend myself, purely because of the "wtf?"-value. – Vegard Mar 15 '16 at 16:52
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    Omg it is real. http://store.steampowered.com/app/379980/ – ave Mar 15 '16 at 16:55
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    @Vegard Not nearly as bad as Shower with your dad simulator – David says Reinstate Monica Mar 15 '16 at 18:59
  • You can also rename games in your list by right-clicking on them and going into "Properties", so it will hide what you're actually playing. I've done that to mess with my friends before :) – Taegost Mar 15 '16 at 20:04
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    Also... You may have just outted yourself, BTW :) – Taegost Mar 15 '16 at 20:05
  • I'm not aware of anything in the Steam ToS that prohibits this. – bwDraco Mar 15 '16 at 23:21
  • Related : http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/8737/can-i-create-one-steam-account-per-game – Autar Mar 16 '16 at 09:24
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    @RossRidge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girls_und_Panzer is also a likely inspiration. – Peteris Mar 16 '16 at 11:17

3 Answers3

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Yes, it does. There isn't anything in the Subscriber Agreement against it.

In fact, you can use the same mobile phone number on multiple steam accounts too.

Also it is clearly stated that you can (and recommended to if you are setting up a dedicated server) create another account:

For security reasons it is recommended that you create a new Steam account just for your dedicated servers.

ave
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    Also, big picture allows hot switching between accounts. – ave Mar 15 '16 at 16:06
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    If I were the Steam CEO, all I would be thinking is that more accounts will generate more money. So no reason to deny multiple accounts. – Dzhao Mar 15 '16 at 17:14
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    @Dzhao It's good that you're not the Steam CEO then. Off the top of my head you're going to have increased support and infrastructure costs and bad people might think up multi-account scams that cost you money. – OrangeDog Mar 15 '16 at 17:27
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    @OrangeDog Point taken. Although definitely take my point with a grain of salt. – Dzhao Mar 15 '16 at 17:29
  • I have two steam accounts. I made one for half-life 2, then stopped playing for several years due to having babies to look after. When I got back to gaming, I forgot I had one and made another. To my annoyance, Steam support refuse to amalgamate them, even though they have the same email address. – Bob Tway Mar 15 '16 at 17:31
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    @Matt Thrower You can actually set them up so that games are shared between them. I was in the same situation as you and that's what I did. – AndrejaKo Mar 15 '16 at 23:19
  • @AndrejaKo thanks for the tip. I'd still like them to merge the accounts, if only so I can nerdily track the play hours and achievements together ;) – Bob Tway Mar 16 '16 at 08:59
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    @MattThrower I'm not sure when you contacted support but nowadays you could probably get away with such a request. Steam support usually responds well if you give them well written and hard-to-object-within-reason requests. – Insane Mar 31 '16 at 05:29
  • Having multiple accounts can get around the issue of family shared libraries only being usable by one person at a time. Hypothetically, let's say you spread your games between multiple accounts in the family, and share those libraries with each family member, your whole family can be playing different games at once, if each picks one from a different shared library. From what I can gather, this is above board according to steam. Nor do I think this has potential to cause any loss of revenue for game publishers. But, who knows how they would feel about it. – AceStar Nov 25 '21 at 12:17
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It is allowed, but it might not be necessary. You can manually add the game's executable as a non-steam game, and name it whatever you want.

This way, it never shows on your public profile: non-Steam games don't have hours tracked, neither show up on the recently played section of the profile page. The only place it will show up is if one of your friends goes to that specific game's store page, you will be in the "Friends who own this game" section.

For more information, see this page.

Kroltan
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It is allowed but not necessary. On your friends list click the arrow next to your name and select offline mode. Then your friends can't see your activity until you sign back into online mode.

Evan
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    Except for the fact that it shows in the list of what you're playing, and what you've recently played, which is available from your Steam profile. – MattR Mar 16 '16 at 11:55
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    Even if you're always offline when playing? I thought it would only show up under owned games, which means nothing on steam, I'm sure everyone has quite a few they don't play. I did not check our verify so I could be wrong – Evan Mar 16 '16 at 12:13
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    Offline mode in Friends is separate from Steam being Offline. – MattR Mar 16 '16 at 12:26
  • Gotcha, you're right then – Evan Mar 16 '16 at 12:58