Great: being able to play different games in the same library at the same time! Really nice feature that just makes sense, good upgrade from old family sharing. Bad: One year cool down to switch...
Great: being able to play different games in the same library at the same time! Really nice feature that just makes sense, good upgrade from old family sharing.
Bad: One year cool down to switch families, oof. I know this is an anti-piracy measure, but one year seems extreme, even in an actual use case it's entirely possible to leave a family (your partner, maybe) and find a new partner you want to share with within a year. I feel something like a month would still keep pirates from hopping on-and-off at will, while being much more manageable and realistic.
Edit: reading it a second time, it seems the cool down starts when you join the family, not when you leave it. That makes it significantly less penalizing in most cases, which is good.
At the same time, is it that important that you can share your steam library with whoever you’re dating?
one year seems extreme, even in an actual use case it's entirely possible to leave a family (your partner, maybe) and find a new partner you want to share with within a year.
At the same time, is it that important that you can share your steam library with whoever you’re dating?
It can be, a year is a long time, and it's entirely possible to be emotionally tied to a person enough to want to share the things you love with them (in this case, your games). There's also the...
It can be, a year is a long time, and it's entirely possible to be emotionally tied to a person enough to want to share the things you love with them (in this case, your games). There's also the issue that when a family ends, there's not an immediate severing of family-shares, as usually it's not relevant. My personal example is my Ex and I had an Amazon family (max 2 adults), which we made to share books. A full year after we split, I found another partner I wanted to share some books with, but turns out Amazon has a 6 month waiting period before you can replace anyone, which sucked and meant that I turned to less-legal avenues to share (thankfully easy to do with ebooks). The family I had setup didn't "cost" me anything so I didn't even think to cancel it, and when it was time the wait was prohibitive.
All that being said, if my edit is true and the cool down starts when you join a family rather than leave it, then that solves pretty much all my gripes.
I shared my steam library with my girlfriend 2 months after being together, and we moved in together around that time. When you know, you know. Spotify has a similar restriction about family...
I shared my steam library with my girlfriend 2 months after being together, and we moved in together around that time. When you know, you know.
Spotify has a similar restriction about family accounts which sucks because we actually ran into that issue. She was still on her exes account up until 8 months before that so she wasn't able to join mine for a while.
Notably the first thing I thought about when I read the article. It looks like a cool idea!
What happens if my brother gets banned for cheating while playing my game?
If a family member gets banned for cheating while playing your copy of a game, you will also be banned in that game.
Notably the first thing I thought about when I read the article. It looks like a cool idea!
Super important info. As kids, my brother and I shared our (my) Steam account. But the whole reason I told him to get his own because he liked to mess around with cheats. I didn't want a VAC ban!...
Super important info.
As kids, my brother and I shared our (my) Steam account. But the whole reason I told him to get his own because he liked to mess around with cheats. I didn't want a VAC ban!
So then he stole some other kid's account. And he's been using it ever since 😑
I think it had something to do with him playing Counter Strike. Our original CD key was registered to my account, so when I told him to get off, he didn't want to or couldn't buy a new CD key...
I think it had something to do with him playing Counter Strike. Our original CD key was registered to my account, so when I told him to get off, he didn't want to or couldn't buy a new CD key (this was like 2004-2005 and he would've been like 13 or 14). So he somehow got someone else's account that did have CS on it already.
I think that just means no online multiplayer games that gets shared, at least for me. I know that seems horrible, but it is safer for your copy of the game and account.
I think that just means no online multiplayer games that gets shared, at least for me. I know that seems horrible, but it is safer for your copy of the game and account.
Is there actually a way to use Steam family as intended to accomplish that? It says in the FAQ that all games are shared to the family, but parental controls can be used to limit games to child...
Is there actually a way to use Steam family as intended to accomplish that? It says in the FAQ that all games are shared to the family, but parental controls can be used to limit games to child accounts. To me that made it seem like you can't restrict multiplayer games to adults in the family. I get to an extent if you're inviting someone they should be trusted, but if there's a particular game you really care about and don't want to risk it, and even if you trust a person there's no telling if they make a mistake and try a tool that ends up getting a VAC ban or such.
I mean I'm totally fine with that. Everyone I play with regularly thinks cheating is lame in any case, but I was mostly wondering to see if it would add a bunch of cheater accounts basically for...
I mean I'm totally fine with that. Everyone I play with regularly thinks cheating is lame in any case, but I was mostly wondering to see if it would add a bunch of cheater accounts basically for the price of one. Totally fine with banning an entire family if one of them is cheating, we should bring back real life shaming of that stuff anyways haha.
Basically hard agree, especially in Multiplayer games. That would make things a lot more easier for multiplayer games and competitive games. And just takes out the cheaters more, and will add...
Everyone I play with regularly thinks cheating is lame in any case
Basically hard agree, especially in Multiplayer games.
but I was mostly wondering to see if it would add a bunch of cheater accounts basically for the price of one.
That would make things a lot more easier for multiplayer games and competitive games. And just takes out the cheaters more, and will add friction in the families that shared their game with a cheater, thus shaming in the family.
But if you know before hand that the person that you are sharing your games with is a cheater, either by VAC bans on accounts or them gloating about it or however you found out about them doing it, then it is going to be safer to block them from accessing that game that they want to mess with, especially a game that you really enjoyed.
I'm hyped about this feature - being able to let my partner play single player games once I finish them (and vice versa) is very cool. From a personal financial standpoint, that means only buying...
I'm hyped about this feature - being able to let my partner play single player games once I finish them (and vice versa) is very cool. From a personal financial standpoint, that means only buying one copy of each single player game in most instances.
From a developer standpoint, I could see some upset about a potential decrease in revenue. Realistically, I doubt there's enough cases of people family sharing that this would make an impact. And developers will be able to opt out of this feature, should they choose to do so.
I don't see why AAA games would opt in, if that's the case. Steam already had to lower their revshare to get more of them in. On the other end, indies would opt in just because they need any and...
And developers will be able to opt out of this feature, should they choose to do so.
I don't see why AAA games would opt in, if that's the case. Steam already had to lower their revshare to get more of them in.
On the other end, indies would opt in just because they need any and all visibility. I imagine there's gonna be some sort of family buy filter (or someone will curate one if it's not the case).
Well, since it's opt-out (opted in by default), maybe they'll just turn a blind eye to it. In my steam library of ~1200 games, only 31 of them are currently not eligible, and that's mostly due to...
Well, since it's opt-out (opted in by default), maybe they'll just turn a blind eye to it. In my steam library of ~1200 games, only 31 of them are currently not eligible, and that's mostly due to third party launchers requiring their own keys (Rockstar games, Ubisoft games).
If they're smart they would. Most AAA games are supported by micro transactions nowadays. Personally, I know that a game would have to be VERY VERY appealing to both me and my girlfriend for us to...
If they're smart they would. Most AAA games are supported by micro transactions nowadays. Personally, I know that a game would have to be VERY VERY appealing to both me and my girlfriend for us to consider buying two copies of it just so we could play together. There's been maybe like 3 games like that ever. Having the ability to play the game at the same time without buying two copies makes me way more willing for both of us play it, which opens the door for potentially both of us paying for stuff in game instead of just me or her.
I think this is also a massive selling feature for steam, and the more eyeballs on steam at any given time, the more sales via steam a developer can expect. It's a win win in my book, but I could definitely see a lot of short term growth focused MBAs disagreeing.
It's bittersweet. Great for sharing games with my brothers, not so good for cheating the system. And I did my fair share of both. Oh well. I can see their justification for it. It is a bit...
It's bittersweet. Great for sharing games with my brothers, not so good for cheating the system. And I did my fair share of both. Oh well. I can see their justification for it. It is a bit concerning that someone in my family can get me banned seemingly permanently from a game just because we share a library, but steams support is good so maybe there's a way to appeal?
VAC bans are basically unappealable, outside of extreme circumstances (eg. the recent ban caused by AMD driver changes). You really need to be sure you trust whoever you're sharing with. At the...
but steams support is good so maybe there's a way to appeal?
VAC bans are basically unappealable, outside of extreme circumstances (eg. the recent ban caused by AMD driver changes). You really need to be sure you trust whoever you're sharing with.
At the same time, not every game implements VAC bans, or they have their own system in place. For instance the Dark Souls games have so-called "soft bans" that are tied to Steam account IDs. These bans would presumably not be shared between families. Though I suppose it is possible this new implementation of family sharing may expose the Steam ID of all parties. That remains to be seen.
In what way does it restrict cheating the system, or how was it being done? I didn't even realize there was a way people were cheating the system in the old manner. It doesn't seem like they have...
In what way does it restrict cheating the system, or how was it being done? I didn't even realize there was a way people were cheating the system in the old manner. It doesn't seem like they have a comparison list to know what is changing on this new setup versus the old. I'm just curious what changes they made I guess.
The main "cheat the system" was to share with people who weren't family members. There's a user in this thread, for example, who has access to 11 other people's libraries. There's a cap of 6...
The main "cheat the system" was to share with people who weren't family members. There's a user in this thread, for example, who has access to 11 other people's libraries. There's a cap of 6 people in a family, so in the new system, they would only get access to 5 other libraries. It also sounds like Steam might get more aggressive about actually limiting this to families, based on how some of the legalese is written. Previously, the "check" to see if you were eligible to share with another user was that you had to actually log into Steam on their computer. The justification for that was that if you made the effort to go to someone's computer and log in, then you were probably family or at least quite close. However, that's really easy to game - just use a remote desktop tool and let someone log in, or even just share credentials, and you can get access to lots of libraries.
I would say that it's notable that this is not what the original system was intended for, but it does seem to be one of the primary uses of steam library sharing (the other use being actually sharing with family members).
I think it's also notable that I set it up, and did not encounter anything telling me I could not add people to my family, and it also auto-suggested people that I had previously shared with, who were not within my household. But the reduction in library sharing capabilities is pretty big.
Steam Families is a collection of new and existing family-related features. It replaces both Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View, giving you a single location to manage which games your family can access and when they can play.
Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members' libraries, even if they are online playing another game. If your family library has multiple copies of a game, multiple members of the family can play that game at the same time.
To me, the previous one was much more restrictive. My husband and I often play games at the same time, and if he was playing a game from my account, I couldn’t play anything from my library. With...
To me, the previous one was much more restrictive.
My husband and I often play games at the same time, and if he was playing a game from my account, I couldn’t play anything from my library. With the new setup we can both play games concurrently, even if they’re both from my account. The lack of a lockout like that is huge for me.
"How dare they close my loophole?!?!" Don't get me wrong, I'm all for using a system to its limits and then some. But this solves a laundry list of issues I'd had with the old system, and the only...
"How dare they close my loophole?!?!"
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for using a system to its limits and then some. But this solves a laundry list of issues I'd had with the old system, and the only thing missing (from announcement anyhow) is a nice way to split and transfer ownership of games for families that have been together long enough or purchased while in same family.
If that comes to pass I'll be happier than a pig in shit.
I understand, but at the same time I feel it's fair to take the piss a bit. Those of us not gaming the system are seeing a massive free upgrade to usability, and that outweighs the closing of some...
I understand, but at the same time I feel it's fair to take the piss a bit.
Those of us not gaming the system are seeing a massive free upgrade to usability, and that outweighs the closing of some loopholes.
That's already what this is about I think. Which is absolute bullshit since it will ruin sharing for people who travel and move around, like other services have done.
I read and reread the announcement, but I have yet to learn if you have to physically login to the computer of a "family member" to set them up like the old Valve system, or if its like Google...
I read and reread the announcement, but I have yet to learn if you have to physically login to the computer of a "family member" to set them up like the old Valve system, or if its like Google sharing where you can invite them in with an email or a text message?
Based on this, the way I read it is that users of both participating computers need to just click around in the Steam settings, and that's it. No cross-computer physical requirements.
you will need to be opted into the Steam Family Beta. Any family members you invite will also need to join the beta.
Based on this, the way I read it is that users of both participating computers need to just click around in the Steam settings, and that's it. No cross-computer physical requirements.
I set it up last night; here's how it works: Parent / Host of family sets up a family. parent invites accounts of children / family members invitees receive a message on steam and can acccept an...
I set it up last night; here's how it works:
Parent / Host of family sets up a family.
parent invites accounts of children / family members
invitees receive a message on steam and can acccept
an email confirmation is sent to the steam account
you click the confirmation in the email
done
You don't have to log in on the child computer at all. It is much simpler than the old solution.
It's notable that it automatically suggested to me when adding members, my two children whose computers are in my house, but also my brother and sister-in-law, who are not in my household. I think it's because I have previously shared my library with them. I didn't try to invite anyone new, but when I searched around, it didn't tell me I was restricted from sharing with anyone else on my list.
This fucking sucks for me. My friends and I share all our libraries (I'm at the hidden cap of 11 libraries shared) but we're not all friends with each other and won't be joining a limited 5 person...
This fucking sucks for me. My friends and I share all our libraries (I'm at the hidden cap of 11 libraries shared) but we're not all friends with each other and won't be joining a limited 5 person family with each other. I've gotten to play so many games for free because of the old system, which is why I'm assuming they're killing it and moving forward with this.
There's a big benefit in being able to play games simultaneously, for sure. But I dislike what I'm reading in the small print a lot. As I wrote in the other comment: But also: And as others have...
There's a big benefit in being able to play games simultaneously, for sure. But I dislike what I'm reading in the small print a lot. As I wrote in the other comment:
If you cannot join a Steam Family, it is likely (...) Your account activity does not show that you are part of the same household as the existing members.
But also:
If you have accidentally joined a Steam Family as a Child, you should contact Steam Support
And as others have pointed out
Your Steam Family privileges may be revoked and your account may also be VAC banned if a member of your Steam Family playing a game from you cheats
cooldown of one year
Steam Families can contain up to 6 family members.
Honestly I'm seeing a lot of restrictions that will run headfirst into how real life families function, and a lot that requires putting yourself at the mercy of the abritrary decisions (and delays) of some sort of algorithm or Steam support. If I was a teenager, I would endeavor to have an independent account well before adulthood, even if I had to create it from scratch.
If an adult kicks another adult out of a family, does the kicked adult have to go without any family membership for up to a year?
Sure. So, up to a year, as I asked. I join my partner's family, or they join mine, while we're in a relationship. Six months later we break up and they kick me out. Am I not allowed to be in a...
Sure. So, up to a year, as I asked. I join my partner's family, or they join mine, while we're in a relationship. Six months later we break up and they kick me out. Am I not allowed to be in a family for six months?
You're not able to share your Steam library for six months. I don't understand the complaint to be honest. Yea, it would be great to live in a perfect world but blame all the people who would...
Am I not allowed to be in a family for six months?
You're not able to share your Steam library for six months.
I don't understand the complaint to be honest. Yea, it would be great to live in a perfect world but blame all the people who would happily game such a system otherwise.
I dislike this perspective. Gabe Newell is well known for understanding that you can provide a better service for everyone by tolerating a small amount of misuse and greatly lowering friction....
I dislike this perspective. Gabe Newell is well known for understanding that you can provide a better service for everyone by tolerating a small amount of misuse and greatly lowering friction. That's how Steam has always worked - for many years - and this is in line with my own beliefs. This is why I've been a vocal defender of Steam for a long time.
But the new feature seems to potentially increase friction and sacrifice the experience of a lot of edge case users of the service for the sake of punishing "all the people who would game the system". This type of enshittification feels directly contrary to the traditional Steam MO and more in line with what worse companies are doing in the last couple of years. Why should I not complain about things getting worse for me and my friends and family because some stranger might do something? It feels like a very good reason to complain.
I wrote down my thoughts on the matter and sent them directly to Valve too.
Just to be clear, I don't think you shouldn't complain. I said I don't understand the complaint. I just don't see how a cooldown on family members will a) affect very many people and b) be...
Why should I not complain about things getting worse for me and my friends and family because some stranger might do something?
Just to be clear, I don't think you shouldn't complain. I said I don't understand the complaint. I just don't see how a cooldown on family members will a) affect very many people and b) be anything more than a minor nuisance for the people affected. The only people this seriously affects is people trying to abuse the system.
The cooldown, specifically, will not affect that many people, but it can still be a major nuisance if videogames are important in your life. I still foresee it affecting a lot of minors going...
The cooldown, specifically, will not affect that many people, but it can still be a major nuisance if videogames are important in your life. I still foresee it affecting a lot of minors going through the divorce of their parents. The bigger problem, to me, is the removal of a lot of valid use cases from Family Sharing that are no longer supported by Families. In my message, I pointed out economically disadvantaged people will be more affected by both of these, as well as by the 6 person family limit (as opposed to the effective 11 person limit split by pairings that Obliviater pointed out). I have direct knowledge of people who will be affected.
I tolerate DRM on digital rentals, because its what makes digital rentals even a thing. I don't tolerate DRM on things that I purchased, because I purchased them. These changes broadly seem to be...
I tolerate DRM on digital rentals, because its what makes digital rentals even a thing.
I don't tolerate DRM on things that I purchased, because I purchased them.
These changes broadly seem to be a step closer to treating purchases like purchases, and not rentals. And for that I'm thankful. We're about 3-4 steps away from being able to fully trade existing purchased copies of games to other people. That final step is a doozy that is gonna take some major clout (and probably a few legal rulings) to pull off, but will be nice to have back.
If you could swap games with other people as if they were physical purchases that certainly would address many of the use cases that become impossible if the old Family Sharing is fully replaced...
If you could swap games with other people as if they were physical purchases that certainly would address many of the use cases that become impossible if the old Family Sharing is fully replaced by the new Steam Family.
And that is ultimately where things are heading. Software companies have been operating in a legal grey area, and courts are increasingly finding that one-time purchase of software is a good,...
The main reason we can't exchange our digital copies we purchased is because the software companies are really, really, really motivated to avoid exiting the legal grey area that prevents us from doing so.
Great: being able to play different games in the same library at the same time! Really nice feature that just makes sense, good upgrade from old family sharing.
Bad: One year cool down to switch families, oof. I know this is an anti-piracy measure, but one year seems extreme, even in an actual use case it's entirely possible to leave a family (your partner, maybe) and find a new partner you want to share with within a year. I feel something like a month would still keep pirates from hopping on-and-off at will, while being much more manageable and realistic.
Edit: reading it a second time, it seems the cool down starts when you join the family, not when you leave it. That makes it significantly less penalizing in most cases, which is good.
At the same time, is it that important that you can share your steam library with whoever you’re dating?
It can be, a year is a long time, and it's entirely possible to be emotionally tied to a person enough to want to share the things you love with them (in this case, your games). There's also the issue that when a family ends, there's not an immediate severing of family-shares, as usually it's not relevant. My personal example is my Ex and I had an Amazon family (max 2 adults), which we made to share books. A full year after we split, I found another partner I wanted to share some books with, but turns out Amazon has a 6 month waiting period before you can replace anyone, which sucked and meant that I turned to less-legal avenues to share (thankfully easy to do with ebooks). The family I had setup didn't "cost" me anything so I didn't even think to cancel it, and when it was time the wait was prohibitive.
All that being said, if my edit is true and the cool down starts when you join a family rather than leave it, then that solves pretty much all my gripes.
I shared my steam library with my girlfriend 2 months after being together, and we moved in together around that time. When you know, you know.
Spotify has a similar restriction about family accounts which sucks because we actually ran into that issue. She was still on her exes account up until 8 months before that so she wasn't able to join mine for a while.
For comparison, Google Family also have similar one year cooldown when used to share paid services like YouTube Premium or paid storage.
Notably the first thing I thought about when I read the article. It looks like a cool idea!
Super important info.
As kids, my brother and I shared our (my) Steam account. But the whole reason I told him to get his own because he liked to mess around with cheats. I didn't want a VAC ban!
So then he stole some other kid's account. And he's been using it ever since 😑
I've never understood why people would do that, why not just create his own account..?
I think it had something to do with him playing Counter Strike. Our original CD key was registered to my account, so when I told him to get off, he didn't want to or couldn't buy a new CD key (this was like 2004-2005 and he would've been like 13 or 14). So he somehow got someone else's account that did have CS on it already.
I think that just means no online multiplayer games that gets shared, at least for me. I know that seems horrible, but it is safer for your copy of the game and account.
Is there actually a way to use Steam family as intended to accomplish that? It says in the FAQ that all games are shared to the family, but parental controls can be used to limit games to child accounts. To me that made it seem like you can't restrict multiplayer games to adults in the family. I get to an extent if you're inviting someone they should be trusted, but if there's a particular game you really care about and don't want to risk it, and even if you trust a person there's no telling if they make a mistake and try a tool that ends up getting a VAC ban or such.
I think that's gonna have to come down to discussion between the adults in question, rather than anything through Steam's tools.
I mean I'm totally fine with that. Everyone I play with regularly thinks cheating is lame in any case, but I was mostly wondering to see if it would add a bunch of cheater accounts basically for the price of one. Totally fine with banning an entire family if one of them is cheating, we should bring back real life shaming of that stuff anyways haha.
Basically hard agree, especially in Multiplayer games.
That would make things a lot more easier for multiplayer games and competitive games. And just takes out the cheaters more, and will add friction in the families that shared their game with a cheater, thus shaming in the family.
But if you know before hand that the person that you are sharing your games with is a cheater, either by VAC bans on accounts or them gloating about it or however you found out about them doing it, then it is going to be safer to block them from accessing that game that they want to mess with, especially a game that you really enjoyed.
I'm hyped about this feature - being able to let my partner play single player games once I finish them (and vice versa) is very cool. From a personal financial standpoint, that means only buying one copy of each single player game in most instances.
From a developer standpoint, I could see some upset about a potential decrease in revenue. Realistically, I doubt there's enough cases of people family sharing that this would make an impact. And developers will be able to opt out of this feature, should they choose to do so.
I don't see why AAA games would opt in, if that's the case. Steam already had to lower their revshare to get more of them in.
On the other end, indies would opt in just because they need any and all visibility. I imagine there's gonna be some sort of family buy filter (or someone will curate one if it's not the case).
Well, since it's opt-out (opted in by default), maybe they'll just turn a blind eye to it. In my steam library of ~1200 games, only 31 of them are currently not eligible, and that's mostly due to third party launchers requiring their own keys (Rockstar games, Ubisoft games).
If they're smart they would. Most AAA games are supported by micro transactions nowadays. Personally, I know that a game would have to be VERY VERY appealing to both me and my girlfriend for us to consider buying two copies of it just so we could play together. There's been maybe like 3 games like that ever. Having the ability to play the game at the same time without buying two copies makes me way more willing for both of us play it, which opens the door for potentially both of us paying for stuff in game instead of just me or her.
I think this is also a massive selling feature for steam, and the more eyeballs on steam at any given time, the more sales via steam a developer can expect. It's a win win in my book, but I could definitely see a lot of short term growth focused MBAs disagreeing.
It's bittersweet. Great for sharing games with my brothers, not so good for cheating the system. And I did my fair share of both. Oh well. I can see their justification for it. It is a bit concerning that someone in my family can get me banned seemingly permanently from a game just because we share a library, but steams support is good so maybe there's a way to appeal?
VAC bans are basically unappealable, outside of extreme circumstances (eg. the recent ban caused by AMD driver changes). You really need to be sure you trust whoever you're sharing with.
At the same time, not every game implements VAC bans, or they have their own system in place. For instance the Dark Souls games have so-called "soft bans" that are tied to Steam account IDs. These bans would presumably not be shared between families. Though I suppose it is possible this new implementation of family sharing may expose the Steam ID of all parties. That remains to be seen.
In what way does it restrict cheating the system, or how was it being done? I didn't even realize there was a way people were cheating the system in the old manner. It doesn't seem like they have a comparison list to know what is changing on this new setup versus the old. I'm just curious what changes they made I guess.
The main "cheat the system" was to share with people who weren't family members. There's a user in this thread, for example, who has access to 11 other people's libraries. There's a cap of 6 people in a family, so in the new system, they would only get access to 5 other libraries. It also sounds like Steam might get more aggressive about actually limiting this to families, based on how some of the legalese is written. Previously, the "check" to see if you were eligible to share with another user was that you had to actually log into Steam on their computer. The justification for that was that if you made the effort to go to someone's computer and log in, then you were probably family or at least quite close. However, that's really easy to game - just use a remote desktop tool and let someone log in, or even just share credentials, and you can get access to lots of libraries.
I would say that it's notable that this is not what the original system was intended for, but it does seem to be one of the primary uses of steam library sharing (the other use being actually sharing with family members).
I think it's also notable that I set it up, and did not encounter anything telling me I could not add people to my family, and it also auto-suggested people that I had previously shared with, who were not within my household. But the reduction in library sharing capabilities is pretty big.
This seems much more controlling than the existing family sharing, which is frustrating.
To me, the previous one was much more restrictive.
My husband and I often play games at the same time, and if he was playing a game from my account, I couldn’t play anything from my library. With the new setup we can both play games concurrently, even if they’re both from my account. The lack of a lockout like that is huge for me.
It's definitely better for actual families, but it's a big step down for people who were gaming the system a bit like me
"How dare they close my loophole?!?!"
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for using a system to its limits and then some. But this solves a laundry list of issues I'd had with the old system, and the only thing missing (from announcement anyhow) is a nice way to split and transfer ownership of games for families that have been together long enough or purchased while in same family.
If that comes to pass I'll be happier than a pig in shit.
I don't really appreciate your comment. I'm glad it solves issues you had, but I'm allowed to say that it causes problems for me.
I understand, but at the same time I feel it's fair to take the piss a bit.
Those of us not gaming the system are seeing a massive free upgrade to usability, and that outweighs the closing of some loopholes.
I hope you have the same sense of humor when they crack down on sharing with people outside of your home :)
That's already what this is about I think.
Which is absolute bullshit since it will ruin sharing for people who travel and move around, like other services have done.
Oh boy, public opinion on this change was majorly positive but I think this is going to swing it back towards the negative if they enforce it.
I read and reread the announcement, but I have yet to learn if you have to physically login to the computer of a "family member" to set them up like the old Valve system, or if its like Google sharing where you can invite them in with an email or a text message?
Based on this, the way I read it is that users of both participating computers need to just click around in the Steam settings, and that's it. No cross-computer physical requirements.
I set it up last night; here's how it works:
You don't have to log in on the child computer at all. It is much simpler than the old solution.
It's notable that it automatically suggested to me when adding members, my two children whose computers are in my house, but also my brother and sister-in-law, who are not in my household. I think it's because I have previously shared my library with them. I didn't try to invite anyone new, but when I searched around, it didn't tell me I was restricted from sharing with anyone else on my list.
This fucking sucks for me. My friends and I share all our libraries (I'm at the hidden cap of 11 libraries shared) but we're not all friends with each other and won't be joining a limited 5 person family with each other. I've gotten to play so many games for free because of the old system, which is why I'm assuming they're killing it and moving forward with this.
There's a big benefit in being able to play games simultaneously, for sure. But I dislike what I'm reading in the small print a lot. As I wrote in the other comment:
But also:
And as others have pointed out
Honestly I'm seeing a lot of restrictions that will run headfirst into how real life families function, and a lot that requires putting yourself at the mercy of the abritrary decisions (and delays) of some sort of algorithm or Steam support. If I was a teenager, I would endeavor to have an independent account well before adulthood, even if I had to create it from scratch.
If an adult kicks another adult out of a family, does the kicked adult have to go without any family membership for up to a year?
The cooldown of 1 year starts when you join a new steam family, not when you leave it.
Sure. So, up to a year, as I asked. I join my partner's family, or they join mine, while we're in a relationship. Six months later we break up and they kick me out. Am I not allowed to be in a family for six months?
You're not able to share your Steam library for six months.
I don't understand the complaint to be honest. Yea, it would be great to live in a perfect world but blame all the people who would happily game such a system otherwise.
I dislike this perspective. Gabe Newell is well known for understanding that you can provide a better service for everyone by tolerating a small amount of misuse and greatly lowering friction. That's how Steam has always worked - for many years - and this is in line with my own beliefs. This is why I've been a vocal defender of Steam for a long time.
But the new feature seems to potentially increase friction and sacrifice the experience of a lot of edge case users of the service for the sake of punishing "all the people who would game the system". This type of enshittification feels directly contrary to the traditional Steam MO and more in line with what worse companies are doing in the last couple of years. Why should I not complain about things getting worse for me and my friends and family because some stranger might do something? It feels like a very good reason to complain.
I wrote down my thoughts on the matter and sent them directly to Valve too.
Just to be clear, I don't think you shouldn't complain. I said I don't understand the complaint. I just don't see how a cooldown on family members will a) affect very many people and b) be anything more than a minor nuisance for the people affected. The only people this seriously affects is people trying to abuse the system.
The cooldown, specifically, will not affect that many people, but it can still be a major nuisance if videogames are important in your life. I still foresee it affecting a lot of minors going through the divorce of their parents. The bigger problem, to me, is the removal of a lot of valid use cases from Family Sharing that are no longer supported by Families. In my message, I pointed out economically disadvantaged people will be more affected by both of these, as well as by the 6 person family limit (as opposed to the effective 11 person limit split by pairings that Obliviater pointed out). I have direct knowledge of people who will be affected.
I tolerate DRM on digital rentals, because its what makes digital rentals even a thing.
I don't tolerate DRM on things that I purchased, because I purchased them.
These changes broadly seem to be a step closer to treating purchases like purchases, and not rentals. And for that I'm thankful. We're about 3-4 steps away from being able to fully trade existing purchased copies of games to other people. That final step is a doozy that is gonna take some major clout (and probably a few legal rulings) to pull off, but will be nice to have back.
If you could swap games with other people as if they were physical purchases that certainly would address many of the use cases that become impossible if the old Family Sharing is fully replaced by the new Steam Family.
And that is ultimately where things are heading. Software companies have been operating in a legal grey area, and courts are increasingly finding that one-time purchase of software is a good, which comes with its own set of legal protections.
The main reason we can't exchange our digital copies we purchased is because the software companies are really, really, really motivated to avoid exiting the legal grey area that prevents us from doing so.