Steam Family Sharing

[MuMu]

Steam Announces Family Sharing (http://store.steampowered.com/news/11436/)
Coming Soon: Players who share computers can also share their Steam games

September 11, 2013 – Steam Family Sharing, a new service feature that allows close friends and family members to share their libraries of Steam games, is coming to Steam, a leading platform for the delivery and management of PC, Mac, and Linux games and software. The feature will become available next week, in limited beta on Steam.

Steam Family Sharing is designed for close friends and family members to play one another's Steam games while each earning their own Steam achievements and storing their own saves and application data to the Steam cloud. It's all enabled by authorizing a shared computer.

“Our customers have expressed a desire to share their digital games among friends and family members, just as current retail games, books, DVDs, and other physical media can be shared,” explained Anna Sweet of Valve. “Family Sharing was created in direct response to these user requests.”

Once a device is authorized, the lender's library of Steam games becomes available for others on the machine to access, download, and play. Though simultaneous usage of an account’s library is not allowed, the lender may always access and play his games at any time. If he decides to start playing when a friend is borrowing one of his games, the friend will be given a few minutes to either purchase the game or quit playing.

For more information about Steam Family Sharing and the beta program, please visit store.steampowered.com/sharing.

An option to share your library with someone else which makes Steam slightly more practical. You can't use the library at the same time, even if it is with different games so that is only really useful for people that play at different times of the day.

Still, a step forward, even if it's a baby step.

[mauve]

It's an interesting concept that will probably work well for some people. My sister and I already play each others' games, because we both know each other's steam passwords and have activated our accounts on each others' PCs. But it'd be nice for multiplayer titles, for example if she wants to play one of my games with her friends on her own account, or vice versa, before we decide if we should buy a second copy.

Neither of us really cares about achievements-- if she's farther along in my own game than I am and earns an achievement, it's not a big deal.

[Azisien]

This is a nice addition. The more digital products can emulate the advantages of a physical collection, but still have the digital product pros, the better.

Now Steam needs to add full Steam Wallet credit game refunds within some reasonable time of purchase. That'll knock off a major gripe I have with digital game platforms. It's just software, not even a physical thing, yet we can all often get refunds/credits on the physical stuff, but not on the platform that's arguably less headache to implement.

[Bells]

Meh...

i mean, cool and all... but it only works for people sharing the same Physical PC... so it's like 1 Library of games with multiple profiles.

Quite honestly? Unless i'm missing something... if i know someone to allow them to use their own steam account to play games on my personal PC, i might as well just let them play on my account.

[akaSM]

Meh...

i mean, cool and all... but it only works for people sharing the same Physical PC... so it's like 1 Library of games with multiple profiles.

Quite honestly? Unless i'm missing something... if i know someone to allow them to use their own steam account to play games on my personal PC, i might as well just let them play on my account.

Nope (http://store.steampowered.com/sharing?l=english)

IS THERE A LIMIT TO THE NUMBER OF DEVICES I CAN AUTHORIZE TO SHARE MY LIBRARY?
Yes. A Steam account may authorize Family Sharing on up to 10 devices at a given time.

Still...

CAN A FRIEND AND I SHARE A LIBRARY AND BOTH PLAY AT THE SAME TIME?
No, a shared library may only be accessed by one user at a time.

I wonder how will this work with offline mode. With the "separate progress and achievements" thing, you could make a Steam account for your [insert relative] and won't have to worry about sharing your account or, risking your progress/achievements. Because EVERYONE has a younger relative that poked the "Delete save" button while you lent him/her a game...

[Aerozord]

isn't this what the xbox one was gonna do

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Yeah, but microsoft was handling it, and just about everything else, with about the same grace as trying to take a shit in public and expect praise for doing so.

[Bard The 5th LW]

isn't this what the xbox one was gonna do

Yes but Microsoft deals in physical items. Like actual discs, that I can move in my hand and physically put in yours. Its a bit less ludicrous when a purely digital form of media is limited.

[Marc v4.0]

isn't this what the xbox one was gonna do

No, Microsoft was attempting to LIMIT the ability to trade physical discs through already established and working methods in order to enforce new purchases on their customers. They were attempting to take a step back while pretending to offer us a Really Good Deal.

[synkr0nized]

Steam Announces Family Sharing (http://store.steampowered.com/news/11436/)


An option to share your library with someone else which makes Steam slightly more practical. You can't use the library at the same time, even if it is with different games so that is only really useful for people that play at different times of the day.

Still, a step forward, even if it's a baby step.


What are you expecting here? No one is going to allow one game purchase/license to give multiple accounts simultaneous use and play, which it seems like you are expecting. That would be counter to the entire purpose of selling games.

[MuMu]

Not simultaneous use of the same game, just the same library. Someone play Game A and other person plays Game B. Maybe it's too much, I don't know, but it just seems to be like lending games to me(But then again, even lending physical games is getting complicated in the new gen so who knows).

[synkr0nized]

Whoops -- I actually did miss the part that mentioned it's the whole library itself and not just the individual game being borrowed at the time. In that case, I agree that it's not the full step it could be.