If you use Steam to play games, you’re probably familiar with the shared library feature. It allows you to share your games with friends and family, as long as they have their own Steam account. However, there’s a caveat – if the person who’s sharing their library with you is playing a game, you can’t access their library. Or can you?
In this post, we’ll show you a workaround that will allow you to play shared library games even when the other person is playing. The only downside is that you won’t be able to access Steam servers while doing this, but it’s a small price to pay for uninterrupted gaming.
To get started, you’ll need to open Windows Firewall. Hit your Windows key and type in “firewall”. You’re looking for an option titled “Windows Defender Firewall” under your control panel. Click on that, then select “Advanced settings” on the left.
Under “Advanced settings”, you’ll see an option for “Outbound rules”. Click on that, then select “New rule” on the right. Under “Program”, select your Steam executable. By default, it’s located on your C drive under “Program Files (x86)”. Scroll down until you find “Steam”, then select “steam.exe”. Click “Open”, then click “Next”.
Make sure the rule is set to “Block the connection”, with all three options enabled. Name it “Steam share” or anything you like, then click “Finish”. Your Steam should now immediately go into offline mode. It may take a moment to update on the friends list, but under “Downloads”, you should see it says “No connection”.
To re-enable the connection to Steam, right-click on the rule you just created and click “Disable rule”. It may take a moment for Steam to register, but it should go through fairly soon.
One thing to note is that it’s a hassle to go into your firewall settings each time you want to play anything multiplayer or enable this rule again. A simpler way to enable and disable this is to create a text document on your desktop, then type the following:
“netsh ADV firewall firewall set rule name = new enable = yes”
Save this as “enable Steam share.bat”. The file extension is important – it will run that command through command prompt so you won’t have to enable it manually. To disable it, create another text document with the following:
“netsh ADV firewall firewall set rule name = new enable = no”
Save this as “disable Steam share.bat”. Double-clicking won’t work – you’ll have to right-click and run as administrator.
And that’s it! This is the easiest way to play shared library games while both libraries are in use. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments and we’ll get back to you.