Factorio Forums

Good afternoon,

If I own the game on Steam, am I permitted to copy the Steam game files to another computer to run a headless server, but continue to run the game client off of the Steam computer?

Thanks!

The Linux headless server is free: https://www.factorio.com/download-headless/stable

How about Windows?

The headless server is linux only I believe. (i dont play MP)

I installed steam on my VM, installed factorio and run a headless windows server v0.12.29 from a bat file with no issues. While also playing on my gaming pc. Server is on UNRAID.

Is there a specific license? I'm looking into creating a Gentoo ebuild but I need to specify a license.

f3rret wrote:Good afternoon,
If I own the game on Steam, am I permitted
Thanks!

I think he wants to know if he can legally per the license run 2 copies of Factorio (1 full game on his pc, 1 on a windows server) from 1 Steam purchase. And the answer is yes no and maybe.

No. you can't run 2 steam copies cause steam DRM.
Yes. You can link your factorio account to your steam account and download a drm free version and run multiple instances of factorio (1xSteam+1 or more drm free, On 1 computer!).
Maybe. Without reading the license for Factorio might be legal. Clairaoswald says this works. So now we just need clarification on legality. IMO it shouldn't be a problem as long as the second copy is being used as a playerless serverhost.

Side rant one of the biggest issues with DRM is being too restrictive to the end-user and all it does is end up harming the end-user who might have little to no knowledge of computers. Any form of DRM should at least be something like how Wube/Factorio does it. I.E download page linked to Factorio/steam accounts, Official mods/addons linked to factorio account etc. and faith that users will love this game and not want to pirate it. Software will get pirated and if your software has restricted drm that was "patched" out by a programmer now you are getting bug reports/behavior that was caused by said thefty patch leading developers to spend more coding time implementing more and more restrictive drm in a never ending cycle. Also dear STEAM stop limiting me to 1 computer at a time for different games. If I am playing Fallout on 1 computer maybe I want to also play the steam version of factorio on another at the same time!
End Rant

[edit - Rant 2]
I am usually pretty good with There, Their, and They're. But for life of me Know, and no should always throw a popup asking which one I want.

Nexela wrote:

f3rret wrote:Good afternoon,
If I own the game on Steam, am I permitted
Thanks!

I think he wants to know if he can legally per the license run 2 copies of Factorio (1 full game on his pc, 1 on a windows server) from 1 Steam purchase. And the answer is yes no and maybe.

No. you can't run 2 steam copies cause steam DRM.

You can run 2 steam copies if one is started as server (with the --start-server option) because when started as server Factorio doesn't invoke the Steam API and Steam doesn't see it's running. AFAIK this is on purpose for exactly that reason.

You can also don't bother with steam on server and download website version of factorio to put on server. To be able to download factorio from website you need to link your steam account with a factorio website account : see viewtopic.php?p=162151#p162151