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Steam Family Sharing

store.steampowered.com

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Re: Steam Family Sharing

#31

Post by freehunter »

Pxtl wrote: 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 just wish my SO could play The Sims 3 on the laptop in the living room while I'm playing Civ 5 on my desktop in my home office. I ended up having to buy her a copy on Origin so we could game at the same time.

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#32

Post by freehunter »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #26
Lockyy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If multiple users could be playing your game, you could also avoid all buying the same game for multiplayer. That seems reasonable for them to want to avoid.

I think the request is that one person plays Game A while the other plays Game B, not two people playing Game A.

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#33

Post by VLM »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #25
chadwickthebold wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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...

Last I checked (less than a minute ago), new games can still come in boxes.

Well, I'll head right over to CompUSA and buy... oh wait.

Maybe I can buy a boxed game from Amazon?

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#34

Post by zalzane »

Valve often talks about trying to provide a service that is more convenient than pirating, and this looks like another step in that direction. If I'm playing a pirated game and want to share it with a friend, it would involve getting them to torrent/crack it, or uploading it to a file sharing host. Using Valve's new program, sharing a purchased game is as simple as sharing it with them on steam.

I'm curious as to what other kinds of convenience measures they'll be able to implement in the future - especially with hardware control via steambox on the horizon.

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#35

Post by cdash »

math0ne wrote: 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.

Probably the part where when your friend decides to play the game you are borrowing from him you get a notice to buy the game or be forced to quit within a few minutes.

Edit: It actually looks even more restrictive in that if your friend decides to play any game on their steam library then you will be booted.

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#36

Post by VLM »

Lockyy wrote: post #20
mmanfrin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's probably some kind of "social network graph" hack that could be applied. Like you could share any game from a family member... but only one singular family member, and you can only change your singular family member "link" on the 1st of January or perhaps the anniversary of when you signed up with Steam. That seems fair.

So my HTPC and my kids desktops can each sign up to share Dad's personal library... but they're both stuck to me, and me only, for a year. In a way I kind of like the idea of my kids not being able to "borrow" some ridiculous 17+ rated gorefest from the other side of the internet or a kid at school... I know they're stuck on my account, or at least I have a vague idea what they're doing.

How would you enforce people not creating accounts merely to share one dudes library? Could make it terribly slow or inconvenient perhaps?

Another interesting option is creating tiered accounts to prevent widespread pirating-type operations. So you can either be a sharer or a borrower and never switch between. Or as per above, switch as many times as you want, once per year.

I'm sure there's some moronic and expensive patents out there to prevent the whole thing from ever getting off the ground.

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#37

Post by seniorsassycat »

I hope this leads to more game sharing. I think letting people play a multiplayer game together when only one person owns the game would be great for the consumer, and lead to higher sales of the game.

I have skipped some co-op games because I knew my friends wouldn't buy it, but they would have played with me if they could.

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#38

Post by [deleted] »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #25
chadwickthebold wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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...

Last I checked (less than a minute ago), new games can still come in boxes.

[deleted]

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#39

Post by VLM »

onli wrote: post #14
kevingadd wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Steams plan now enables up to 10 family members to play a game on any computer."

I've been thinking a better system would be number of shares = number of owned games. Or number of shares per game = retail cost of game divided by total retail value of all games on the entire account. Then I could share out "FTL" dozens of times, but some goofball who opened a fake account containing only one copy of "XYZ" could only share it out precisely once.

This follows the obvious customer service goal of making your best paying customers the happiest.

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#40

Post by tibbon »

mmanfrin wrote: post #16
Raphmedia wrote: post #4

"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?

How/why do you play on two computers at once? Seems difficult.
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