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Steam Family Sharing

store.steampowered.com

11–20 of 123 posts

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#11

"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." So, if one of my friend play on my game, I can play none of my games? Or am I reading this wrong?

"Can I share specific games, or do I have to share my whole library? Libraries are shared and borrowed in their entirety."

Looks like you're right. It's one less step than just giving someone your username and password.

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#12

"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." So, if one of my friend play on my game, I can play none of my games? Or am I reading this wrong?

The way I read it, basically yes. Except if you're the owner of the games being shared you get priority and the person you shared to will get kicked off in a few minutes if they are playing one of the games in the shared library:

"When I authorize a device to lend my library to others, do I limit my own ability to access and play my games? As the lender, you may always access and play your games at any time. If you decide to start playing when a friend is already playing one of your games, he/she will be given a few minutes to either purchase the game or quit playing."

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#13
post #5

This has been a rumored coming feature forever but I can't for the life of me figure out how this benefits steam, or even how they convinced publishers to take part in this. Whats their motivation? Did they go over the publishers heads with this? I'm curious to see how this pans out.

> Whats their motivation?

Probably the amount of customer-service time they have to spend on stolen accounts. Users can presently share an account with a friend... by using their own credentials on their friend's machine, which is a bad idea for like a bazillion reasons.

This lets you do that without risking your credentials.

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#14

Sounds great for a hypothetical Steam Box Seems similar to the way current consoles handle accounts.

Yeah, it's very similar to how XBox Live accounts and digital games work (though, interestingly, it is dramatically inferior to the model Microsoft had proposed for XBox One before everyone got angry and forced them to backpedal - that model had dramatically superior sharing features)

How so? The plan for xbox one was to have up to 10 family members be able to play the same game on any console. Steams plan now enables up to 10 family members to play a game on any computer. In both cases, not on the same time. I don't see the difference.

Edit: Ah, it seems steam only shares the whole library, not single games. A pity, and that might very well be a difference.

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#15
post #8
post #5

This has been a rumored coming feature forever but I can't for the life of me figure out how this benefits steam, or even how they convinced publishers to take part in this. Whats their motivation? Did they go over the publishers heads with this? I'm curious to see how this pans out.

Pre-Steam games weren't tied to an account, so this is just bringing that capability back.

'Pre-Steam'... My god, that makes 2003 seem that much longer ago... How can I be 23 and still feel like an old man? Makes one nostalgic for the days when games still came in boxes...

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#16

"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." So, if one of my friend play on my game, I can play none of my games? Or am I reading this wrong?

I really wish they would fix this. Why should I not be able to have two separate games of mine running at once?

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#18
post #6

... on closer inspection, it seems functionally equivalent to logging into steam on a friend's computer, except that you don't have to type in your password on their machine and you can kick them off easily. Considering how much trouble Steam has with phishing and accounts getting hacked, it's obviously a good idea to minimize any use-case where users are allowing others to get at their passwords. This kind of featur…

I have two machines with steam on it (desktop, laptop) and I get logged out of one if I use the other. Frankly I'm getting tired of it. (that and the "verifying installation..." window)

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#19

"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." So, if one of my friend play on my game, I can play none of my games? Or am I reading this wrong?

"As the lender, you may always access and play your games at any time. If you decide to start playing when a friend is already playing one of your games, he/she will be given a few minutes to either purchase the game or quit playing."

So I can authorise a person to use my account. I can then, at any time, play my own games. But if that other person is playing a game it will kick them off.

I am really excited about this feature. Around the time Portal 2 came out my partner and I lamented the fact that we had to buy two copies if we each wanted to play on our own account, considering how account sharing is against the TOS. I'm sure the people who do account share to get around this will be very happy to know that they don't have to go over and log in their significant other whenever they wish to play a game the other owns.

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#20

"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." So, if one of my friend play on my game, I can play none of my games? Or am I reading this wrong?

I really wish they would fix this. Why should I not be able to have two separate games of mine running at once?

Because otherwise you could co-ordinate which games to buy with your friends so you can all share a single game library for single player games.
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