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My gaming computer is currently downloading Napoleon: Total War and Supreme Commander 2 which I purchased on Steam, and which will take some time to complete. While this download is going on, I would like to play some of my other multiplayer games on my laptop, but I would rather not interrupt the download to do so.

Is it possible to have both computers logged in at once? I know if I was playing a single player game, I could set Steam into offline mode, then resume the download on the other computer, but this won't work for multi player games.

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As several people have mentioned, it is now possible to be logged in on multiple computers at once. Only one computer can be playing a game at a time though. If you start a game while another computer is already in one, you will be notified and told that it will close the other game if you start.

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    You can have one in offline mode and the other online. This is useful if the SO wants to play PopCap games while you are FPSing. ;-)
    – Chris Nava
    Jan 3, 2011 at 6:28
  • I... this is really weird but I just logged into Steam on two computers today. Both are online, logged in, and can use chat. Don't have time to try any games right now.
    – Bob
    Apr 30, 2014 at 10:38
  • Seems the multiple logins came with the Steam Streaming update. This answer is now incorrect.
    – Bob
    May 27, 2014 at 2:52
  • It's been possible for people in the Streaming beta for as long as the beta has been running, too.
    – ToxicFrog
    May 27, 2014 at 3:08
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As of the recent Steam Streaming update, yes, it is now possible to log in to one account on multiple computers at once. You can just log in as normal; it no longer logs you out on other computers.

I'm not sure if this has been confirmed to work on multiple networks.

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As already said is not possible to be connected to Steam with the same account in more than 1 computer at time.

But maybe this QA can solve your problem: How to continue downloading a game in Steam while playing?

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It is not possible to be logged onto Steam in two computers if one of the computers is downloading or playing a game online. One of the Steam accounts must be in offline mode to be logged into both at once.

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Just to make sure there's a more current response: I spent about 5 months being able to be logged in on two computers at once. It suddenly stopped allowing that yesterday. I did install a game on the second computer for the first time about a week ago, before that I just streamed to it occasionally, so maybe there's something to the download/online multiplayer thing.

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  • and I just signed out of both, and logged in again and this time it worked. To be clear, for the past few days, the computer that I keep on and logged in all the time would be forced into offline mode (without restarting steam) any time I logged in or woke up the other computer. There would be no sign in button in the friends list, and the bottom of the main window would say "No Connection"
    – astrocom
    May 20, 2016 at 10:39
  • Sounds like a bug, not an answer to the question.
    – Gerald Schneider
    May 20, 2016 at 18:04
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I did start once the same game on two computers simultaneously. The one of them starts the game normally and the second one gives pop-up message asking me if I want to stream the game that is already started?. So, I understand that in the future if I may be streaming i will use this option.

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  • This doesn't really add anything to the existing answers.
    – Joachim
    Sep 22, 2019 at 14:11

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