Valve offers thousands of new and old games from hundreds of big name and independent publishers in one convenient place, its Steam digital distribution platform. The company frequently has promotions and sales that offer up hit games for cheaper than anywhere else on the Web. It's because of these sales that people like me have built vast gaming libraries with hundreds of titles.

• How To Download Games From Steam
• Download Steam Games Without Steam
• Free Pc Games On Steam
• Can You Download Games On Steam While Playing
• Download Games On Steam While Playing

Jun 24, 2013 - Just fire up the game you want to play, then follow these steps: Press Alt-Tab to get back to the desktop, then pull up the Steam window. Hover over 'Library' and select 'Downloads.' Click the big 'Resume All' button, as seen in the screenshot above. A new Steam update will allow users to download software while playing a game, meaning you may never have to resort to other, non-game pastimes again. This means in-progress downloads will no. Luckily, you can force Steam to download games while you play. Just fire up the game you want to play, then follow these steps: Press Alt-Tab to get back to the desktop, then pull up the Steam window.

Thanks to Valve's new sharing features, which the company unveiled last September, you can now share these games with friends and family members.

The process

Before you can enable Family Library Sharing, you must first have the Steam Guard security feature enabled. This can be done by opening the Steam settings menu, clicking on the Account tab, and selecting the 'Manage my account with Steam Guard security' option.

To enable the sharing feature, you must first log in to your family member or friend's computer with your Steam account. Next, open the settings menu, click on the Family tab, and choose to authorize the computer. You will then have the option to authorize any accounts that have also logged into the same computer.

Once this is complete, log out of your account and let your friend or family member log back into theirs. They will then have the ability to download and install select games from your gaming library.

You can authorize up to 10 computers and up to five accounts to access your Steam gaming library.

Benefits

While it's possible to do, the main purpose of the Family Library Sharing feature is not to share your library with a friend who lives across the country. It's aimed at parents who want to share their own personal Steam library with their kids.

One of the benefits of using Family Library Sharing is having the ability for both you and your kids (or siblings) to play a game without interfering with the other's progress, saves, and achievements. It can also be used to test a game you are interested in (and that a friend owns, of course) to see if it's worth your hard-earned cash.

Limitations

As I mentioned above, there are some limitations. Only five accounts can access your gaming library from up to 10 different computers. You must also have an Internet connection to access shared libraries, which are shared in their entirety. Because of what Valve calls 'technical limitations' and licensing agreements, not all games are available for sharing, such as those that require a subscription.

A shared game can only be accessed by one person at a time, which means you still won't be able to play any games together. The account holder will have priority access to his or her games. If you decide to start playing while another user is already in one of your games, they will be given the option to buy the game or end their session.

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Have you ever noticed how slow Steam’s built-in web browser can be? Do you struggle with slow download speeds? Or is Steam just slow in general? These tips will help you speed it up.

Steam isn’t a game itself, so there are no 3D settings to change to achieve maximum performance. But there are some things you can do to speed it up dramatically.

Speed Up the Steam Web Browser

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How To Download Games From Steam

Steam’s built-in web browser—used in both the Steam store and in Steam’s in-game overlay to provide a web browser you can quickly use within games—can be frustratingly slow. Rather than the typical speed we’ve come to expect from Chrome, Firefox, or even Internet Explorer, Steam seems to struggle. When you click a link or go to a new page, there’s a noticeable delay before the new page appears—something that doesn’t happen in desktop browsers.

You may have made peace with this slowness, accepting that Steam’s built-in browser is just bad. However, there’s a trick that may eliminate this delay on many systems and make the Steam web browser more responsive.

This problem seems to arise from an incompatibility with the Automatically Detect Settings option, which is enabled by default on Windows. This is a compatibility option that very few people should actually need, so it’s safe to disable it—and easy to re-enable if you need to.

Press the Windows key to open the Start menu, type “Internet Options”, and then click the Internet Options shortcut.

In the “Internet Properties” window, switch to the “Connections” tab, and then click the “LAN settings” button.

Disable the “Automatically detect settings” check box, and then click “OK” to save your settings. You can then click “OK” again to close the “Internet Properties” window.

With any luck, the significant delay you experienced every time a web page loaded in Steam’s browser should now be gone. In the unlikely event that you encounter some sort of problem with your network connection, you can always re-enable the “Automatically detect settings” option.

Increase Steam’s Game Download Speed

Steam attempts to automatically select the download server nearest to your location. However, it may not always make the ideal choice. Also, in the case of high-traffic events like big seasonal sales and huge game launches, you may benefit from temporarily selecting a less-congested server.

Open Steam’s settings by clicking the “Steam” menu, and then selecting the “Settings” option.

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In the “Settings” window, switch to the “Downloads” tab, and then select the closest download server from the “Download Region” dropdown menu. While you’re on this tab, make sure that Steam’s download bandwidth doesn’t have a limit applied.

You may want to restart Steam and see if your download speeds improve after changing this setting. In some cases, the closest server might not be the fastest. A server a bit farther away could be faster if your local server is more congested, for example.

Steam once provided information about content server load, which allowed you to select a regional server that wasn’t under high-load, but this information is no longer available. Steam still provides a page that shows you the amount of download activity happening in different regions, including statistics about the difference in download speeds in different US states, but this information isn’t as useful.

Accelerate Steam and Your Games

RELATED:What Is a Solid State Drive (SSD), and Do I Need One?

Free Pc Games On Steam

One way to speed up all your games—and Steam itself—is by getting a solid-state drive (SSD) and installing Steam to it. Steam allows you to move your Steam folder—which is at C:Program Files (x86)Steam by default—to another hard drive. Just move it like you would any other folder. You can then launch the Steam.exe program as if you had never moved Steam’s files.

Steam also allows you to configure multiple game library folders. This means that you can set up a Steam library folder on an SSD and one on your larger regular drive. Install your most frequently played games to the SSD for maximum speed and your less frequently played ones to the slower drive to save SSD space.

To set up additional library folders, head to Steam > Settings > Downloads, and then click “Steam Library Folders” button.

In the “Steam Library Folders” window, click the “Add Library Folder” button and create a new game library on another hard drive.

Can You Download Games On Steam While Playing

The next time you install a game through Steam, you can choose the library folder to which you want to install it.

With the proxy compatibility option disabled, the correct download server chosen, and Steam installed to a fast SSD, most things Steam should be much faster. There’s not much more you can do to speed up Steam, short of upgrading other hardware like your computer’s CPU.

Download Games On Steam While Playing

Image Credit: Andrew Nash on Flickr