Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
General: Steam Announces Family Sharing
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Steam has announced that next week will mark the commencement of the Family Sharing program beta where friends/families can approve one another and share game libraries.
"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.
Find out more on the Steam Sharing page.
Comments
Smart.
Probably has to due with the Steam Box, so a family dosn't have to buy the same game multiple times to play, and to allow parental control based on who logs into the family account.
I believe you are right. They are preparing for the future.
This does sound cool. I was a big nay-sayer when Steam was being born but I quickly fell in love with it.
This will be amazingly awesome if there are no additional fees/service charges or subscriptions that are required.
If I recall though, one of their competitors had plans to allow game sharing. Perhaps it was origin I can't recall. None the less I believe it as put in place as more of a counter against that then really planning for the steam box, though obviously given that does come out it could be very helpful in that area as well.
Here is my commentary regarding the Steam Announcement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVkGMeWLyig&feature=share&list=UUUTBAd6YDR20ktwwhA8UBOw
"Though simultaneous usage of an account's library is not allowed"
...wait, so if my wife is playing Portal 2 from my Steam Library on her PC and then I launch Half Life on my PC from my Library, she gets thrown off?
Um.
Yes. When you share an account, it's the ENTIRE account. So, say I share my account with a friend who wants to play Bioshock Infinite, then I go to play Half-Life 2, it would notify my friend that he is going to be locked out.
The trick to get around this, and is already allowed with the steam app, is for one of you to run in "Offline" mode. My son and I do this all the time, can actually even play the same game, just not together of course. I let him run my Steam account in Offline mode and I always use the normal Online mode. When he wants to download mods for his games or update or install new games to his system, he asks me and I'll log out of Steam until he's done. Works like a charm.
I'm so happy I found Steam when I did. Some of my best purchases anywhere have been on Steam. /stopsGushing
Isn't this what the XBone wanted to do?