Collaboration and Shared Accounts

Making Scratch projects is a lot of fun - and it's even more fun if you can get together with your friends and make something collaboratively!  We on the Scratch Team love to see collaborations on Scratch. We have editor features like the Backpack and Remix button to help Scratchers organize and work on collaborations.

In recent years, we’ve noticed that Scratchers have been making shared  “Collab accounts” used by many or all members of the collaboration.  While we know these accounts can be convenient, we’ve seen some problems with them as well. Because of this, the Scratch Team strongly discourages the use of shared accounts.

A problem with using shared collaboration accounts is that there is no clear record of who did what parts of the project - and there are no backup versions of the project if something gets messed up.  A big problem is that anyone who logs into the account can see its email address, which is sharing contact information.  And, if the account is abused in some way, Scratch Team can’t know who was using the account at the time the abuse happened - the result is we sometimes accidentally block people who weren’t even involved.

If you have a shared account, please pick one member to become the account owner and have them change the email address and password so that it becomes a single-user account again. You can collaborate using remixing and/or the backpack and then, if you’d like, the person who controls the account for the collab can share the project when it’s done. You might want to use the Collaboration section of the forums or a studio to plan and organize this process.

Thanks for your help keeping Scratch a creative, fun and safe place!

Questions and Answers

Are all shared Collab accounts going to be blocked?

Not right away, but as we come across them, we will ask the users of it to convert it to a single user account

What if I want to share an account with my Sister/Brother/Mother/Father?

That’s probably okay. If you’re sharing a computer with someone, and especially if you’re using the computer together, it’s okay to use the same account if you’d like.

Our teacher makes us use one account - is that okay?

We generally discourage that, because if one student breaks the community guidelines, the entire class could lose their account. 

Summary

Working together on projects is great, but shared accounts are not allowed because they can cause safety and accountability issues. It’s best for each person to use their own account and collaborate using tools like remixing or studios.