Steam Family Sharing; Must I install the games again for each account?

Question

I have a younger brother. His Library consists of four games. Mine is 50+. I don't want to leave him logged into my Steam Account, so Family Sharing is a great boon. However, upon authorizing the computer and his profile, his Library insists that he needs to re-install all of the games into his Steam folder. Is there a way to avoid this? I've already eaten up more than half of the drive's space- there's no way he can install all of them.

Answer 1

If both accounts are using the same computer, you just need to point Steam to your steamapps folder location.

1. Click to install one of the games
2. When it comes up on the first window with location, make sure you choose to select New from drop down menu.
3. Navigate to where your folder is located.
4. Steam will recognise the game folders within and use them for your brother to play.

This will not work if he has his own computer, so he will have to install them on his own computer if he wants to play them there.

Answer 2

As Flaunting mentioned, if it's on the same computer, just on a different account, let the steamapps directory point to the same place for both users.

In the case of both computers being in the same home network, but not the same PC per say, it already gets difficult. You could then put your steamapps folder on a shared network drive, but that would most likely lead to stutters if not outright errors due to the transportation time of the data.

Then, not directly referring to your question, an option, nevermind it being inefficient and generally a hassle, would be to only copy the games he wants to play at a given time over to his PC and delete them again if he's done. Well, that or buying an additional hard disk, as disk space is cheap.