Steam Family Sharing

[luckton]

This post could have also been titled "We don't have enough topics in the Steam forum that have the word Steam in them!"   

Anyways, suck it, consoles:

http://store.steampowered.com/news/11436/

Coming Soon: Players who share computers can also share their Steam games

September 11, 2013 – Steam Family Sharing, a new service feature that allows close friends and family members to share their libraries of Steam games, is coming to Steam, a leading platform for the delivery and management of PC, Mac, and Linux games and software. The feature will become available next week, in limited beta on Steam.

Steam Family Sharing is designed for close friends and family members to play one another's Steam games while each earning their own Steam achievements and storing their own saves and application data to the Steam cloud. It's all enabled by authorizing a shared computer.

“Our customers have expressed a desire to share their digital games among friends and family members, just as current retail games, books, DVDs, and other physical media can be shared,” explained Anna Sweet of Valve. “Family Sharing was created in direct response to these user requests.”

Once a device is authorized, the lender's library of Steam games becomes available for others on the machine to access, download, and play. Though simultaneous usage of an account’s library is not allowed, the lender may always access and play his games at any time. If he decides to start playing when a friend is borrowing one of his games, the friend will be given a few minutes to either purchase the game or quit playing.

For more information about Steam Family Sharing and the beta program, please visit store.steampowered.com/sharing.

[Velorath]

Ok, this is pretty awesome. Join the Family Sharing group to be considered for Beta.

September 11, 2013 – Steam Family Sharing, a new service feature that allows close friends and family members to share their libraries of Steam games, is coming to Steam, a leading platform for the delivery and management of PC, Mac, and Linux games and software. The feature will become available next week, in limited beta on Steam.

Steam Family Sharing is designed for close friends and family members to play one another's Steam games while each earning their own Steam achievements and storing their own saves and application data to the Steam cloud. It's all enabled by authorizing a shared computer.

“Our customers have expressed a desire to share their digital games among friends and family members, just as current retail games, books, DVDs, and other physical media can be shared,” explained Anna Sweet of Valve. “Family Sharing was created in direct response to these user requests.”

Once a device is authorized, the lender's library of Steam games becomes available for others on the machine to access, download, and play. Though simultaneous usage of an account’s library is not allowed, the lender may always access and play his games at any time. If he decides to start playing when a friend is borrowing one of his games, the friend will be given a few minutes to either purchase the game or quit playing.

For more information about Steam Family Sharing and the beta program, please visit store.steampowered.com/sharing.

More info here.

[luckton]

Beat you by 5 seconds   

[Ingmar]

This seems fairly useless for most of the reasons I personally would want to use it, locking me out of my entire library when I'm sharing something out is no good.

[HaemishM]

This sounds quite cool to me.

[schild]

Wondering how much I should charge for access to my 300 games.

[schild]

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.

Nevermind, this blows.

Edit: Regions are not locked though, so that's totally awesome - for Australians and Germans.

[Velorath]

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.

Nevermind, this blows.

Edit: Regions are not locked though, so that's totally awesome - for Australians and Germans.

I wouldn't say it blows. It's a big restriction, but if I'm sharing a library with my brother for instance, he works mostly mornings and I work mostly nights so there isn't a lot of overlap in our play times. I mean this was obviously going to have to have restrictions, otherwise publishers would never go along with this.

[Trippy]

Just share your account with your brother.

This really only applies to sharing with people you don't trust with your account.

[Tebonas]

How do they prevent somebody going in offline mode before sharing his account with somebody else?

I really hope this doesn't have a negative impact on the Steam Offline Mode.

[Ingmar]

Put another way, it's less sexy than the XBone family sharing thing they removed after the always on crying.

[Yegolev]

It removes the need for me to share my password.  I don't see any other advantage.

[Ingmar]

Like, it seems really good if you're talking about people who share the same physical computer already - now they can have their own friends lists and achievements and stuff with a single copy of the game - but beyond that, not so much.

[luckton]

If he decides to start playing when a friend is borrowing one of his games, the friend will be given a few minutes to either purchase the game or quit playing.

They should probably edit that line then.  This gives me the impression that I could share my library and we could not play the same game at the same time, but different games from the same shared library at the same time.

[KallDrexx]

This worsk for me.  My brother shares my steam account, and we already can't be logged in at the same time so there's no net loss for me.

[Merusk]

Fuck it I'll continue doing what I'm already doing.  One account, multiple users.  "Go offline" on anyone but the owner's account until the others want to install a game.

Ta-da 90% of what family sharing offers.   What does it lack? Achievements (which most don't care about) and protection from one wild statement from the kids locking me out of all my games.   Which is accomplished by keeping them offline and not giving them the password in the first place.

TBH I've begun to contemplate multiple Steam accts anyway.  I'm really nervous about being denied access from my purchases if my account is hacked, or I lose access to it some way.  I'd rather have it spread out with each account having 5-10 games attached.

[Yegolev]

Keep all your money in separate banks as well?

[Merusk]

My money is insured if some banker decides "Hey let's run off with this shit."  Not so much if Valve decides, "nah, that comment gets you a ban." or "oh hey, we're insolvent/ selling to Google."  I've been burned on digital collections before.

[Xanthippe]

It removes the need for me to share my password.  I don't see any other advantage.

What this does is allow my son to play my games, without him wrecking my progress while being able to keep track of his own separate from mine. So, for example, he doesn't have to buy Skyrim if he wants to play it.

It's great for people who live in the same house and share computers, and don't play games a lot. There is no advantage for people who simply want to "borrow" a friend's game or for those who are playing heavily.

[Yegolev]

Or dads that mooch off their son's achievements.

He'll ask for an account one day anyway.  Already he wants his own Minecraft account.

[KallDrexx]

So, family sharing is even less useful than I thought.

In order to enable family sharing on a single pc you have to log into your account on that pc, go into settings and then click the "Authorize this computer for family sharing".  So it's pretty sucky for remote family as you still have to give out your password for them to do the initial sharing authorization.

[Tebonas]

Or you just download Teamviewer and enter the password yourself?

[Falconeer]

You don't trust your family with your gaming password?

EDIT: I would also assume you can give them the pass, have them authorize their own account with it, and RIGHT AFTER THAT you change your master Steam password so they will still be authorized but won't be able to log into your account, just borrow your games.