Steam For Schools

[mwbutler]

Hi

 

Valve has released "Steam For Schools" for Education which gives you Portal 2 and Sandbox Universe for free - our Science department is very keen to get access to this.

 

To me, this looks like a right PITA not only due to the firewall + proxy issues (we don't have access to the firewall) but there seems to be no way to script a way to get Steam to auto login without having to put the details into the software first. Game downloads will also be another issue but I guess I can copy the game from one PC to all the others then verify files within Steam...usually I like these projects but I think this one is going to be a huge pain.

 

Has anyone else looked into Steam For Schools or got Steam working on their network?

 

Cheers

 

Matt

[3s-gtech]

The game download can be sped up by copying the GCF for the game across (which contains the majority of the files needed). Sadly only a small number of our machines have the graphics grunt needed to play this (pre HD2000 - forget it!). The firewall ports needed are mentioned in the FAQ - it's possible that your LEA will open them but may be a push. I think you'll need to enter the Steam login details on each client at least once.

[Chris_Jones]

Just to bump this thread, has anyone got this working?

I've inquired over a week ago, but not heard anything back from Valve.

[salc]

I am also interested to know if anyone has got this working. I have been asked to install Source Filmmaker which needs Steam and which will hopefully work with Steam for Schools. There are an awful lot of ifs and maybes in this lot.

[mukz]

are you apart of LGFL?

[Chris_Jones]

Looks like this is no longer a running program.

 

Here is the response I got from Steam Support

 

Hello,

 

A staff member has replied to your question:

 

SourceU accounts are no longer provided by Valve as all of the tools needed for the program are now available for free.

 

Each student should create a Steam account using the link below:

 

Create an Account

https://store.steampowered.com/join

 

Students will also need to download Team Fortress 2 from the store page for assets:

 

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 on Steam

 

The Source SDK can be found on the Valve Developer site:

 

Source SDK 2013:

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_SDK_2013

 

The SDK source code can be found on Github:

 

Source SDK 2013 source code:

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source-sdk-2013

 

If you will be using the Portal 2 Puzzle Maker students will need to purchase Portal 2 on their Steam accounts:

 

Portal 2

Portal 2 on Steam

 

NOTE: The Portal 2 Puzzle Maker is not intended as a replacement of Hammer.

 

If you have any further questions, please let us know - we will be happy to assist you.

 

So they now just want you to setup standard steam accounts, rather than having specific cut-down education versions.

 

Very disappointing really.

[localzuk]

So, they want every child to install Team Fortress themselves? I fear Valve don't understand the education world. Which is sort of fair enough, as they're a gaming company.

[Chris_Jones]

It is kinda disappointing though, as the original premise of free portal 2 with locked down accounts was very much the right direction for education.