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Question for the crowd: My son has been playing in my Steam account for several years now and I don't care much about my achievements, but he does. I'm thinking I create a new account for myself, change the email addr for the old account, create a new family and add him. Good idea? Any gotchas to be aware of?
Amazon Music just introduced profiles.
Hopefully an encouraging trend in 2024 that tech finally realizes households exist and have different needs than individuals.
This feature is why I was willing to buy a Steam Deck several months ago, and I've been very happy with it.
Prior to that, I had been purchasing games on Steam as little as possible -- Epic Games Store, GoG, direct -- anything to avoid Steam, just because I was so frustrated with the old Steam Family Sharing setup and its library lock system.
Steam Families is everything that I've wanted it to be. Super pleased with it, and it's a very pro-user move. Highly highly recommended!
I understand the now a days most people have their own computer, so the log-out/log-in is not a problem for most people; but some of us have a gaming desktop connected to the living-room TV that is shared by the whole family, and in this case a way to change profiles without having to do all the hassle of logout/login is really needed.
I've been using the new Steam Families in beta for the past several months, and it's wonderful. This feature is why I was willing to buy a Steam Deck several months ago, and I've been very happy with it. Prior to that, I had been purchasing games on Steam as little as possible -- Epic Games Store, GoG, direct -- anything to avoid Steam, just because I was so frustrated with the old Steam Family Sharing setup and its…
I wonder if it is because ideology from the top or just a very robust good-reputation based company policy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Per-account bans would also be easily exploited by those who do want to cheat - buy a game once, make five smurf accounts, add them all to a family, and get six fresh starts for the price of one. Any loophole like that absolutely would be abused.
Maybe it would be better if it worked by a system of strikes? Like if one of the accounts that you are sharing cheats, that account gets banned and yours get a strike, this strike means you and the other accounts that use your copy are more closly and harshly monitored but you can still play, if another cheat is detected in that copy then you get a ban. This would give breath room for parents to explain to their kids…
Additionally, this only benefits people who share their game with cheaters - just don't do that. If you can't trust someone won't cheat with your copy of the game, they probably aren't a close family member.
Interesting as an example of how for-profit corporate software design models a family.
Is it about the limit of 5 people in a "family"?
I can't seem to find anything fundamentally wrong with this, they seem to be treating the library as if you had physical copies of each game "disc" and one device per family member. Is it artificial? Well, yes, because the games are actually digital, but I suppose they do want you to buy two copies if two people want to play at the same time.
A very important part is that Steam requires that all accounts in a family have the same country in their account (the one used for store restrictions and for payments), AND (!) be from the "same household". For the latter they seem to be actually checking login history to see, I don't know how granular that check is (city/state), but it's still very interesting. So even if two people have the same country set in the…