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Steam Families Is Here

store.steampowered.com

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Re: Steam Families Is Here

#31

Post by safety1st »

the_af wrote: post #29
safety1st wrote: post #3

Interesting as an example of how for-profit corporate software design models a family.

Out of curiosity, do you see anything obviously soulless with Steam Families? 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…

I meant what I said literally, it was neither Reddit faux-political snark nor a negative/positive moral statement. Who you consider to be in your family is a very personal affair and a random corporation doesn't know what your definition of family is, it also can't just let you add anybody because it's a profit based enterprise. It's interesting to look at the design choices made here like the 1 year "cooldown" on family membership and the fact that you can get banned if the person you shared you game with misbehaves. Basically they require you to put some skin in the game when you share, which is interesting from a standpoint of software design

Re: Steam Families Is Here

#32

Post by Semaphor »

vitus wrote: post #5

This has been available in beta for some number of months, and it's been a much better experience than the original Steam family sharing setup, where you essentially shared the entire library instead of individual games. With Family Sharing, if one of your family members was playing a game from your library, and you started playing some other completely unrelated game, then you'd boot them from their current game. Th…

Ohh, finally. I’ve been playing with Steam "offline" for quite some time now (only singleplayer, so it doesn’t matter) so I don’t kick my wife out of whatever she is playing from my library. This is awesome.

Re: Steam Families Is Here

#33

Post by seba_dos1 »

Larrikin wrote: post #14
Rinzler89 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems totally fair to me. Don't loan your games to people you can't vouch for. It creates and preserves a circle of accountability. Similarly how you wouldn't loan your car to a friend who doesn't have insurance. If you do it it's on you if he bins it.

Pretty much every single child thinks cheats are the greatest things ever when they first discover them. Usually you discover how boring and easy they make the game fairly soon after, but you still try them out.

Sure, but it's the parent's responsibility to teach the child to use such cheats in single player games to not ruin the experience for others in the process.

Re: Steam Families Is Here

#34

Post by Atotalnoob »

elashri wrote: post #30
Tiberium wrote: post #27

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…

And that exclude long distance relationships and the case when one of the family members is studying abroad. And this is a realistic scenario not a hypothetical one.

Or someone on a business trip or vacation

Re: Steam Families Is Here

#35

Post by jordemort »

Been using the beta with my kid for a few months, it's great. I got to take the parental lock code off of my own account and I no longer have to hide Genital Jousting from my own library.

Re: Steam Families Is Here

#37

Post by schmorptron »

red1reaper wrote: post #20
jsheard wrote: post #13

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…

Or maybe at least to allow users to restrict certain games from being shared?

Re: Steam Families Is Here

#38

Post by echoangle »

elashri wrote: post #30
Tiberium wrote: post #27

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…

And that exclude long distance relationships and the case when one of the family members is studying abroad. And this is a realistic scenario not a hypothetical one.

I wouldn't really call a long-distance relationship or studying abroad the same household, so I don't think this is a good argument against the system.

Re: Steam Families Is Here

#39

Post by echoangle »

Atotalnoob wrote: post #34
elashri wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that exclude long distance relationships and the case when one of the family members is studying abroad. And this is a realistic scenario not a hypothetical one.

Or someone on a business trip or vacation

Hopefully it uses long term data and doesn't kick you out if you log in at another location a single time. I was assuming you can't make a family if you are consistently somewhere else relative to the rest of the family members.

Re: Steam Families Is Here

#40

Post by TrianguloY »

Families seem to like this, which is good, but the previous method also allowed independent friend sharing, which this new one removes.

In the old family sharing, if you share your library with a friend (a close one, you still need to log into their computer) and that friend shared with you, each of you still have other 4 independent and non-shared friends to choose.

With the new method each new friend is also shared, and counts towards the limit of both of you.

I understand the family sharing is meant for families, but without a similar "friend sharing", feature you can no longer share your games with a close friend the same way you would share a physical disc, and for me that's a great loss.

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