Steam Introduces Family Sharing

Can all Steam games be shared with friends and family?

No, due to technical limitations, some Steam games may be unavailable for sharing. For example, titles that require an additional third-party key, account, or subscription in order to play cannot be shared between accounts.

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That rules out a lot of games from the start ... pretty much everything from big publishers.

PC + steam FTW!!!

This is nice. Steam making moves against consoles?

To be honest, the only Steam feature I am interested in is owning my own games and playing them without the steam DRM. One can dream.

Being able to only play one game at a time per library is a bit much to be very useful for active users. I lament not many modern games having demos though, so this is potentially cool for having friends try out games they might wanna buy or, more importantly, seeing how well it'll run on their machines.

Hopefully it'll evolve and perhaps enable more freedom for games that support it. DRM-free is movement that people have gotten behind (GOG.com) but has been subverted by Steam's DRM but otherwise excellent service dominating the market. In it's current form, it's still changing Steam's DRM policy in a more liberating direction.

This seems only mildly more convenient than sharing passwords.

It also sounds like you can't access Steam at all, which, if you're primary social network is on steam...

It also sounds like you can't access Steam at all, which, if you're primary social network is on steam...

Yeah, I read that sentence a few times. If that's so, then this is more comparable to having multiple profiles on one Xbox than it is having multiple Xboxes with one profile sharing its games with another profile.

This would be handy if you share a computer with a family member or something so that you can keep separate sets of saves, but it's not very handy if I want to loan a friend a game. Seems like if I do that, I can't go home and play something else.

That's not how it has to work though.

It could be you can share a game in your library and play a different game as the owner. This is the ideal scenario to me.

And if that's so problematic, I guess you think friends lending physical games is problematic? That's what I've done with my friends plenty before.

From what was clear about the original Xbox One system, this is how it was supposed to work. This Steam set up is perhaps a step in the right direction, but doesn't have much of a use case at the moment.

One person playing in a given library at a time. If you want to play any game in your library, you boot out anyone playing any of your shared games. Legit but also more restrictive than password sharing.

Wait, is it one person can play a specific game from a library at a time (sensible), or one person can play from a specific library at a time (no different than sharing your password)?

But dont we need the power of the cloud for this? I tought only Xbox One was able to do this.

So they aren't letting people exploit the system, so what? If more than two people could play the same game at the same time it would just result in friends sharing games all the time instead of buying them, yeah as a consumer that would be a nice thing to exploit but let's not pretend it wouldn't also be problematic at the same time.

This sounds great. Now I just need ten friends or family who give a fuck about games.

Dude that game has been $7.50 mulitple times. (with all the DLC) just get buy her a copy.

Seems like a lot of fanfare for nothing.

Steam is the only place this could be experimented with properly, it's important we do stuff like this to figure out how digital distribution can evolve for the future.
That's not a slant against Microsoft for trying to do it first, the correct way to describe this right now is "unproven concept", and basing their entire console, network and market structure on an unproven concept was wrong.
Small steps don't hurt anyone.

Social media: reminding you of the crushing loneliness of existence that drove you to it in the first place.

It's a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the fact that two people can't play different games simultaneously means this isn't a big deal at all. You can already accomplish this by sharing your account/password with a family member.

All this does is reduce the risk of having your account hijacked by someone you shared your password with, while also letting Valve mine you for more marketing data.

I just read Valve's post, and it's strange that they're talking about "Share your computer", rather than "share your games/account". Seems weirdly ambiguous.

If you look at the actual website it is fairly clear that this is merely sharing on a shared computer. AKA if you have your steam games on the family computer, your brother can play them.

@wh1terav3n said:

I still haven't seen a compelling technical reason why the removal of "mandatory, always online" controls also removed the chance of having a "privileged" friends list with access to my purchases. What is more, if features like this became popular in the following generation, I can definitely see MS and Sony including it on some extend on their architecture.

That will be a blast for all the people that called it impossible, like the sixaxis and dualshock in a single controller in the last generation.

Besides, that is hardly the same example. Microsoft tried to introduce new controls that banned a lot of interactions between gamers and their purchases, while Steam tries to introduce features that are not available at the time. Does those features make it more on par with Microsoft original pitch for the XB1? Yes. Is it unfortunate that Steam had to consider a special scenario of their use cases to create parity with something Microsoft announced? Sure. But people where not happy with MS because of the new restrictions, not because of the sharing implementation. When they created restrictions instead of loosing them up, people bitch and moan...

@katelyngadd said:

Maybe I got it wrong, but it seems like some account (the one that own the library has privileges over the other), so while he might see and access your shared list, he will be kicked out the moment you try to enter a game in that list.

While not exactly revolutionary, that would mean they facilitate sharing by removing the need to contact someone you shared your list with, to let them know you want to use it.

So it's providing the same benefits and limitation to the currently illegitimate practice of sharing an account (which I don't do), except that people have their own accounts so they aren't booted off Steam if someone else were to log in; but it block you from all playing from the shared library at the same time. That's what I understand. That's not bad. I'd use it for myself if I had multiple gaming devices or kids in the house.

It;s great for families who share a single gaming PC, every kid in the house gets their own account, achievements, friend's list, save games. It's a nice concession, and it can't be abused by 10 buddies who just want to play the same license.

To all the people who say this is useless, you don't have a family. It's not meant for you.

I'm glad they're exploring this frontier. I hope they continue to explore it until they come up with something useful, because this isn't. Not to me at least.

Whether it's a little good or a lot of good, it's all good. Why complain? It sounds cool to me. It will allow some people to benefit from it. Heck, I see myself telling a cousin or friend to borrow a game of mine to try it out while I'm not using my account. It's like a free rental.

Ummmm. Valve needs to be a lot more clear on this.

correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't seem that big. Isn't this essentially what the Xbox One should be able to do at launch. One console, anyone can sign in as their own account, one Gold membership, everyone can access the same games. Hell, isn't it just the equivalent of what you can do on 360/PS3. Multiple accounts, one system. Everyone gets their own saves and achievements?

Now, if it is in fact multiple computers which can access your library, than this sounds like it's the same as if the games were on disc and you can lend them around to your buddies. Only one person at a time type of thing. Valve seems to have solved what Microsoft was trying with Family plan thing they had. Their problem was mixed messages and DRM for consoles which is hard to sell. Now for Steam, it's easier. They've been around long enough. Taken enough shit early on and are now a trusted business. I guess in that sense this feature can be big.

Well, considering majority of us don't play games 24/7 (cause of homework or after-work leisure), there's definitely some use there to let your friends try some games that they normally wouldn't otherwise.

You can also probably share with friends from different timezones too such as Asia and the US (which is >12 hours difference).

@rayeth: You're right. It's definitely a step in the right direction for all of us. But let's face it, this is really just a way for you to do what most people are already doing (giving people access to their steam accounts) without the security risk of someone changing your password or getting you banned in a multiplayer game.

Ummmm. Valve needs to be a lot more clear on this.

correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't seem that big. Isn't this essentially what the Xbox One should be able to do at launch. One console, anyone can sign in as their own account, one Gold membership, everyone can access the same games. Hell, isn't it just the equivalent of what you can do on 360/PS3. Multiple accounts, one system. Everyone gets their own saves and achievements?

Now, if it is in fact multiple computers which can access your library, than this sounds like it's the same as if the games were on disc and you can lend them around to your buddies. Only one person at a time type of thing. Valve seems to have solved what Microsoft was trying with Family plan thing they had. Their problem was mixed messages and DRM for consoles which is hard to sell. Now for Steam, it's easier. They've been around long enough. Taken enough shit early on and are now a trusted business. I guess in that sense this feature can be big.

Just imagining all the angry posts and calls and e-mails Steam support is going to have to deal with now when people are wondering why they can't share their games while playing one of their own games in the same library. Just judging from a lot of the people saying this is so awesome.

@fwpx: Correction: This is a way to share DIGITAL games that could not be previously shared at all (legally) before.

You're right that it is still kinda crappy compared to hard copy sharing of a physical disk. And there are still MAJOR problems with this as well (have to share the whole library at once vs individual games), but it's something. I'm not likely to utilize it, but I'm happy someone is trying to make it work. The digital future(TM) is closer than we think, and I hope some kind of solution that mimics the physical system can be in place before then.

Dude, that is fucking Nuts. now my cousin can get his own account!

@lordofultima said:

Which was entirely true. You couldn't have both.

EDIT: Man, they even took the EXACT NAME from the Xbox One version of this idea. (Though the Xbox One version was WAY better than this), both the owner and the lendee could play the same game, multiple lendees could play different games off of someone's account. Man, that would've been awesome.

It's cool, but functionally its not THAT useful. I mean if you're busy doing other stuff someone can play, but you can't do jack with your account while they're playing (well you can boot them lol).

But babysteps! It'll get there!

Sounds good

That's not why people bitched and moaned. They took it away as some imaginary crux, like we can't have both used game sales AND family sharing. lol

I was super excited when I read the first few paragraphs, but this actually makes my particular scenario worse.

My wife loves Dragon Age: Origins. Loves it. She's probably beaten it 8-10 times now. She's always asking to play it, it's on my Steam account, so I let her just log on and play it. She is super against (and logically so) me buying her a copy because it's a waste of money. Why would we spend money on a copy for her if she can type 8 digits into steam and get access to it? So I thought this plan would finally solve that, until I read that only one user can access the library at a time. Now, if she's playing DA:O and I want to play a game, i just log in and boot her off of steam and the game keeps running. With this, she would be forced to quit out? Dumb.

This is just a more restrictive, more secure way to share your games. No thanks.

Fair enough with the thought that this is baby steps towards real sharing. We will see. Point being that right now this is pretty useless to almost all users, that is the reality.

It's almost like they're testing the waters with a few baby steps into the sharing of digital goods of which nobody (as far as I know) has a good system for yet.

They don't have the knowledge or the experience to launch a fully fledged digital sharing system that works for users and publishers, but they will. Steam wasn't built in a day, remember its early incarnations? Many people had similar misgivings at release.

@towersixteen: You wont get banned by valve for sharing your account.

This game tech war is hilarious. I work in the office of a company owned by sony and we literally share a courtyard park between other buildings with microsoft in another building and valve in another building - all connected to the same park. All on the same city block.

I say we all just go out there with chains and bats and finish this thing off Warriors style and the winner gets to put all the good ideas into play on one console.

COOL!

I like how Value is doing step by step process with this instead of just flipping the switch right away like how Microsoft was about to do. This allows them to see where the problems may show up and can fix till release.

Sounds dumb if only one person can access the entire library at once. Would be a lot better if you just couldn't play the same game.

@zombie2011: Could I still play Single Player games offline? Yes. Then No.

This is BIG #EVO2013

Guys we should hate this! Remember when MS was going to do this and you all bitched and moaned.

Totally. This is a useless program.

The original XOne program allowed a lender to play while you played your own library, so that was actually worthwhile.

How soon will become self-aware and becomes skynet?