Steam Family Sharing will let you lend entire game library to 10 others

Scorpus

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Ever wanted to share your Steam games with your friends and family? Well soon you'll be able to, with Steam set to launch a limited beta of Family Sharing next week, a service that will allow you to share your entire game library with up to 10 other users. The idea with Family Sharing is that you'll be able to share games with "close friends and family members", although of course you could theoretically share games with anyone.

Users will be able to request access to someone's game library, and if granted, will be able to play any title found in that library, free of charge. Not only will you be able to play their games and any DLC associated, but you'll have the ability to upload your own save games to the Steam Cloud, and collect your own range of achievements.

Understandably, Valve have built in safeguards in the Family Sharing system to prevent abuse. The most important restriction is that only one user can access a person's game library at a time, and Steam will give access priority to the library owner. If the owner wants to access their game library while a friend is using it, the friend will be prompted to either save and exit the game within a few minutes, or purchase the game to continue playing.

If you want to gain early access to the Family Sharing feature, a limited beta will begin next week for some interested users that join the Family Sharing Steam group. Otherwise, you can head to the FAQ and learn more about how the system will work.

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Heh, perhaps this will make a 'Steam Box' more attractive. Considering I work full-time and I'm in GMT+10 timezone (Australia), I can see this being beneficial for some people. ;)
 
This is the coolest idea ever for consumers. Not sure it's smart from a financial perspective from Valves point of view. But that's their problem, not mine. :)

So all I gotta do is make friends who have games I don't have that I get to play for free as long as they aren't logged in? I don't see myself ever having to buy another game for quite the long period of time.

As long as Steam doesn't let people I share my games with ever have any kind of access control over my account, like changing passwords, this is going to be a huge success.

God, I love Valve and Gabe Newell. This may end piracy as we know it. Well, Valves incredible low prices for games on sale has already done that for most people. But once this kicks in and you still pirate games your just a sick individual.
 
Not quite sure I am clear about the restriction. My son has 20 or so games I have not tried in his library. This sounds like it may be allowed, which would be good. However, it seems to say that I can access his games at the library level only as long as he is not using his library. Even though he doesn't want to play the game I am trying out, I have to sign off so he can use his library. So maybe this is not so useful if you are in the same time zone.
 
This is great for me - I can have my Big Picture set up in the TV room with a second account that just borrows my library from my primary account and I don't have to worry about them signing each other out.
 
Not quite sure I am clear about the restriction. My son has 20 or so games I have not tried in his library. This sounds like it may be allowed, which would be good. However, it seems to say that I can access his games at the library level only as long as he is not using his library. Even though he doesn't want to play the game I am trying out, I have to sign off so he can use his library. So maybe this is not so useful if you are in the same time zone.

I'm sure there's going to be changes as it's rolled out, if they can get away with that possibly because it wouldn't make sense otherwise. From what I gathered it's more like what XB One was to have, just sharing games but can't play the same one together. I could be completely wrong but that's my general impressions, because it wouldn't make sense otherwise to be sharing at all. Especially if you're a hardcore gamer, and 90% or more of your gaming library is on Steam.
 
This is great for me - I can have my Big Picture set up in the TV room with a second account that just borrows my library from my primary account and I don't have to worry about them signing each other out.

They seriously need to fix that. There's no point to Big Picture if you can't be logged into both. It's a simple check: same WAN, same subnet? Cool, allow.

Also, this is how I understand it: the owner (you) can do whatever they want. Borrower1 can play game X while you play game Y. However, no two borrowers can be playing ANY game from your library at the same time.
 
Cycloid is right, the person sharing their library will NOT be able to play anything else, even if it's a different game. A Valve employee yesterday confirmed this as well on the forums [Link]. This feature appears to be geared at those who only use one device and likely a precursor for their Steambox, as this is more like sharing account access, and not sharing/borrowing games. There are a lot of misleading headlines floating around portraying this as some ability to lend games to friends/family, when you clearly can't.

For those who want to share games with family, at least single player ones, your best bet is still to set one account to offline with the game they want, allowing you to still play whatever you want at the same time.
 
Well Stickymon confused me with his understanding of it.
Mine is: You have a library of 100 games and you can share them all
You are out down the pub. Bob plays all 100 games.
You come home. Bobs told to go away cause ya hungry for some L4D2...
Bob doesnt save but gets booted anyhoo.
Only 1 user can use any one library at any 1 time...
Thats what I got out of all of the above.
So its all a little confusing with how you select people to allow do you then have to be logged out, how do they get in ? A new link on their name in ya friends list. "Buddies Library" ?

This is what Sony should be doing. They had 4 people able to share games with, so I could buy a game and share it and add ons with mates and we could play together, then they took it away and I stopped buying multiplayer stuff. My friends didnt want to pay for stuff and I wanted to play with friends. So in that regard they lose money for being tight fisted *****s and removing that functionality. Greed was their problem

Valve on the other hand don't need this, because they have sales, and 4 pack offers. Which are awesome and even more so in a sale. Its usually like 4 games for the price of 1 or less even. So valve gain nothing from this in my opinion. I won't pay full price for many new games cause they don't wow me, I am usually let down, disappointed. And why not wait for a sale thats only 6 months down the line... So why would any one try before they buy and then think damn I been kicked out, I could buy the game and continue... nah £30 sod that , I will wait n pay £8 in the sale at xmas... Which said person would probably do during the sale anyway.

So a lot of effort for nothing ? Anyone else figure out what they are doing that I am not understanding ?
 
Hmmm...this could be epic. I"d like to share my games with others, but not everyone likes hidden object games xD
 
Valve understands customers and puts them first as a result they have a lot of loyal customers. Many other services put squeezing out every cent from their prey and don't understand why customers run away or complain about it.
 
Yah, this is definitely a step in the right direction. I think there are some interesting things they could do with this, from a strictly sharing perspective... Like, when a guest is trying out someone else's game and then exits or gets the boot, offer the game to the guest at a good discounted sale price as they are leaving. I could see getting some decent revenue just from that possibility alone.

I think ultimately, I'd love to see the capability to link together "family accounts" or create sub-accounts. Give the option to transfer game licenses from one linked account to the other. Of course, there would need to be restrictions on how and when accounts could be linked (same billing maybe?) to prevent abuse, but this would be excellent for families. Like, I could shoot some of the games I don't play to my son's Steam account, leaving me free to play my usual ones. It also opens up the capabilities to split off games that I might be running on my living room gaming HTPC (which could technically be a Steambox in the future).
 
This is great for me - I can have my Big Picture set up in the TV room with a second account that just borrows my library from my primary account and I don't have to worry about them signing each other out.

This is exactly what it's been designed for, as I understand it, the next step towards a SteamBox. One account buying the games for the console, all accounts on the console being able to play them.
 
It would make more sense if they let others play one game while you play another, before steam I could play one of my games and my little brother could play a diff game at the same time, how I loath steam

"The most important restriction is that only one user can access a person's game library at a time, and Steam will give access priority to the library owner."
 
Heh, they updated their FAQ:

[FONT=Motiva Sans Regular Italic]CAN A FRIEND AND I SHARE A LIBRARY AND BOTH PLAY AT THE SAME TIME?[/FONT]

[FONT=Motiva Sans Regular]No, a shared library may only be accessed by one user at a time.[/FONT]
I also doubt going to offline mode will help. You will most likely need to stay online if you're 'borrowing'.

Either way, this still works for people in different timezone. US people have all day that they can play games while I sleep; or people at home country can play games while I am at work.
 
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