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I have been collecting games in my Steam account for a while (I can't resist those 75%-off sales!)

Now my son wants to play a few of the milder games, but I don't want him to have access to my FPS games.

Ideally, I'd create a new Steam account for him and move the non-violent games to his account.

Is this possible?

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    This would be a blatantly exploitable method to sell off your old games, something that many publishers probably abhor (aka not really Valve's fault).
    – Nick T
    Commented Dec 13, 2011 at 21:53
  • While not a solution, Family Sharing might be on option for you. However, it does not allow your son to play non-violent games from your account while you play your FPS games. It only solves the access problem. Commented Mar 27 at 19:47

3 Answers 3

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Unfortunately, Valve will not let you transfer games to a different account, unless they are gift purchases. As suggested in SqlACID's answer, you can create a separate account login for your son that still uses your Steam account login and password.

If you have Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Mac OSX you can additionally setup parental controls to disallow the launching of games that you don't want him to play.

If you want him to be able to launch games directly from Steam, I would suggest creating a new game category specifically for him and then add all the games you want him to have access to. To do this, right click a game and select Set Category..., then add a name. You can then select that category at the top of the games list. Here's a rudimentary example:

Steam Custom Game Categories

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    Do you have any idea how it would then be possible to have 2 different SteamIDs for the exact same account? The account (accounts?) was created 13 years ago. If you look IDs 76561193670583720 and 76561197965551016 on Steam, they're exactly the same account. Was it possible a long ago to split/merge accounts or is there any possible explanation to such a weird thing?
    – dan
    Commented May 25, 2017 at 22:31
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Why not just give him his own Windows login, and put shortcuts to the games for him on his desktop? You can remove the Store option from the taskbar icon; and remove it from the Start option too. I would also encourage keeping the computer in a supervised area, and not just because of Steam.

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Unfortunately, I don't think so. That's the cost of doing business digitally I'm afraid -- Steam doesn't allow refunds or game transfers.

The one thing you can try is by contacting Steam support, as outlined in this thread, but as you may imagine, chances of success are slim.

Though I'd love to be proven wrong.

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