alternative licensing?

You mean to play a LAN game? Just install PA on the other computer as well as your own (or just copy over your PA directory). Then start PA without using the Launcher. You can do that by starting PA.exe directly. It's inside the bin_x64 directory. This will start PA without it attempting to log in. Just type a random name in the username field, go to [MULTIPLAYER] and choose [CREATE LOCAL GAME]. Set the lobby to PUBLIC, and the other computer should be able to see it. Keep in mind that for the local server, you need a 64-bit OS, a quad core CPU and at least 8 GB of memory. To force the server to run anyway, got to [SETTINGS] -> [SERVER] and set it to on, but the server can use quite a bit of resources, so be warned. (You still need 64-bit though)

The next step is to show you friend how much fun PA is and convince him to buy a copy as well.

Unless you have a steam copy, where it doesn't seem to work like that!

Buuuut if you connect your steam account to your Uber account you can do it by getting Uber's launcher.

Oh, right. But who uses Steam anyway?
Actually, doesn't it work if you start Steam in offline mode or whatever it's called?

awesome very nice, I already checked up on the specs an my computer should be able to host the server. thanks a lot for the quick answer

There seem to be 3 rules about the local server:
1. The host has to connect from the same computer (there are dedicated serveer modding approaches)
2. The game has to be set to public
3. No duplicate display names

If all 3 are fullfilled, the game should appear in the Multiplayer game list even when not logged into PlayFab (the Multiplayer Lobby list works as online lobby and LAN lobby list).

Yes you can start the Steam version of PA directly when in offline mode.
I am not sure you can just copy the steam installation and run it on a non-steam computer however.


Edit: odd, I had no idea I could post here. Propably because I got steam early access by a few days?

I'm pretty sure everybody who bought PA can post here.
It's going to be merged with General soon anyway.

hmm, we are experiencing a weird bug: on the second installation, the "Multiplayer"-button is greyed out. All the buttons are greyed out actually. We have tried both copying my directory and downloading it anew. Me logging into my account and logging out again on his computer does not make the buttons available. However, they do work on on my computer before I log in, so it seems to be unrelated to our multiplayer attempts?

That's rather odd... I'm wondering if it's because the second installation is not powerful enough to run the server (so less than four cores or 8GB RAM). Since it won't run the local server, it greys out the multiplayer-button. That's wrong behaviour of course if you only want it to be part of a LAN game... Could you go to settings -> server and force it to "on". Does that make the buttons appear? You asked this 2.5 hours ago, so the chance of playing a multiplayer game may have passed already, but I'm just wondering if that was the problem.

I read a similar report on steam and got to the same asumption.

@miturian: It is propably just a bug with the button being not enabeled. You might be able to directly navigate to the Server List or Game Lobby page* using the Debug Console. I just need to dig out what the proper command/page name was.
Edit: here the way to enter the game lobby directly. Not sure about server list however:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...unity-assistance-required.65297/#post-1021190

*Basically the UI is a modified Chrome Webbrowser with access to the GPU. So every "scene" is technically a webpage.