Steam Family Sharing • Hacker News Board

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#121

Post by iam » Thu, Sep 12, 2013, 3:44 PM UTC

This isn't any different from sharing the password with your family members (who you should trust anyway, right?). Why not make it more useful and allow the person you share with to play games from your library at the same time you're playing?

(but different games. if I want to play TF2 and the family member wants to play Dragon Age, I don't see why that shouldn't be possible!)

Heck, you can already play single/multi player games simultaneously just by sharing passwords and using offline mode. Color me unexcited.

Here's even a quick config file change you can make so that your Steam always starts in offline mode and doesn't force-logout the other person already logged in. http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25474... (tried this with my dad and it works great as long as he doesn't need to patch).

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#122

Post by GhotiFish » Fri, Sep 13, 2013, 7:49 PM UTC

mhaymo wrote: post #117

GhotiFish wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really just a slimy marketing tactic with the slime pawned off on someone you know. Which, funnily enough, is no less slimy.

Define "slimy". Offering someone something which you have a very good reason to think they'd want seems like about the best that marketing can ever be.

There's lots of slimy marketing tactics. Here's one.

Give someone something for free, without telling them its a trial, then have it break down in some predictable manner shortly, then sell them something very expensive to fix it.

Example. You buy a printer for really cheap, you're happy with your purchase, you print off some pages and then after the 8th page, your printer runs out of ink. You go back to the store to see ink for your printer is exorbitantly marked up.

That is a slimy marketing tactic. It relies on common weaknesses in reasoning we humans have, in this case, a sunk cost. You've invested time and money badly, and you are unwilling to see what lies ahead as a worse option as backing out and getting something else.

Can you see parallels with this tactic in what steam is doing?

Re: Steam Family Sharing

#123

Post by Jetlag » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 3:18 PM UTC

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.

Create a new steam account for every game you buy, have each account share it's library with all of your friends.