Don't know where else to put this but I think it applies here best.

I love PC gaming but ended up playing console mainly during the PS4 era. Started a family and when my kid came of age played quite a bit on PS5 with him. Recently I built a monster rig and got back into PC gaming.

A lot of what Valve does with Family Share is absolutely incredible and their consumer focused approach makes Steam a great platform for families. So I have been transitioning my family gaming to also be on here; but I have run into a snag for console like experiences.

My kid wanted to play Co-op and the game was on sale for a couple bucks so I thought this was a great opportunity to transition him more to Steam to take advantages of these features. I plugged my Legion Go into the TV and was ready for some couch co-op.

But there was one thing Steam was missing, consoles let you have multiple profiles logged into a single system at once each one attached to each controller. That doesn't seem to be the case here.

I want my kid to have his own account with his own progress saved to it so that we can play separately if he wants to play on his own without my account. To accomplish this you essentially need each player to have their own device and their own monitor and possibly their own copy of the game (luckily the game allows sharing for co-op, and admittedly a lot of co-op games do this so maybe not the worst aspect).

I was considering getting the Steam Machine at some point to have plugged into the TV for couch co-op or for the kids to play as I am expecting another child on the way. But the console like experience is still lacking when it comes to couch co-op on this platform which is unfortunate.

TL;DR: Steams family experience is almost perfect if only it let each controller have an account logged in for multiple accounts playing couch Co-op.