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Valve Announces Family Sharing On Steam, Can Include Friends
Deathspawner writes "Valve has today announced its next attempt at a console-killer: 'Family Sharing' is a feature that will allow you to share your Steam library with family and close friends. This almost seems too good to be true, and while there are caveats, this is going to be huge, and Valve knows it. As Techgage notes, with it you can share nearly your entire Steam library with family or friends, allowing them to earn their own achievements, and have their own saved games. '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.'"
As long as Steambox allows me to play games with a keyboard and mouse, it will be a superior choice to any other console.
Still no ability to play multiplayer with somebody without them buying the game, the one spot where I feel consoles definitely have the advantage over PC games.
Sorry, I think I need to go to the hospital, I think I broke something laughing so hard.
This better not force you to be on line 100% of the time even if you don't use this.
So now my girlfriend can't walk out with my steam collection and the cat. Whoop dee-doo.
Having the "family sharing" plan lock you out of your entire Steam library while a family member plays a game from your list is not family sharing. This is basically just a way to give your account to someone without having to give them your password. Also, they get to keep their achievements, whoop de doo.
I'm extremely disappointed. I was hoping for a real family sharing option, so I could play Portal in my mancave while my wife plays Gone Home up in the living room, but that's not what this is. It's almost completely useless to me. If Netflix can allow my family to stream multiple movies at once, why cant Steam allow them to play multiple games at once?
Maybe I should just make a new steam account for every game I buy? That way I can have one master account with my friends list, and everything I buy with the account will be a gift for the actual game account. That would let me actually lend games out and maybe even resell them. It would be a bit of a pain to manage, but seems better than this solution where letting someone borrow a game locks you out of every other game you own.
I read the internet for the articles.
As much as I hated a lot of the initial Xbox One launch ideas (especially the limit on how long you could play offline, which was just asinine), this was an idea they were trying to do, from what I understood of their press releases. I'm glad that Valve's doing it, it's a great idea, but I guarantee some of the people singing its praises are the same ones who hated the idea from Microsoft because it interfered with first sale.
I'm imagining you'd have to be online to actually share games, but the rest of the time, you could be in offline mode.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I can see how this functionality can work well with school-agers/teenagers. But with adults/married couples? Maybe if you know other couples who like to game or something. ----- This is better than nothing, I suppose. But it still doesn't let me do what I most want to do: To SELL games over Steam that I don't use/play anymore. ---- In the final analysis, I think that this is mostly about Steam trying to desperately pretend that it isn't draconian DRM; That Steam somehow has "a heart", even though it is all about DOLLARS in actuality. ------- Wake me when I can buy/sell games 2nd hand over Steam. THAT would actually make me happy.. =)
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
I agree, if a friend can't play one of your games while you play another, it's not much of a sharing system. I like your idea about one account per game. Actually, I hate it, but it's about the only way to get around Steam's policy. I'm generally pretty happy with Steam, but this ranks a big "meh".
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
online to actually share games, but will it be 100% with any drop out leading to kickoff right at the time of drop?
Even though the first posters all respond like they've been touched in a bad place, I think it's a great idea. There are several games I don't really play and some of my friends would like to try. Or vice versa. Brilliant.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
If you play any one game from your library it kicks the person you're sharing with from your library. A library is an all at once or nothing share. So my wife can't play Skyrim from my account while I'm playing Borderlands 2. Without being able to share individual games, the feature is pretty worthless. Step in the right direction, sure, but barely. I still have to make sure I'm not in my account (or go offline) if my wife wants to play one of my games. It's pretty much no change from how we have to do things now. Hence, worthless.
So, it's exactly like the XBOne feature that the Internet howled SO derisively at, that Microsoft dropped it, despite it being a fantastic idea?
Oh, wait, you can't spell Valve with a dollar sign. I don't know, could we start calling it $team?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
About Fucking Time.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
To hell with that, still no way for me to play Foo while my friend plays Bar. If I want to play Halo ODST while my friend plays Fable 3, I hand him the Fable disc and put the Halo disc in my own console. Even though both games are in my "library".
Steam is still DRM bullshit. This just slightly improves the current system of sharing a single actual Steam account between multiple people. Note the key word "slightly" in there.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
This is sorta cool.
Oddly, this ties closely to the main barrier for me with Steam games: Steam's DRM, while very open in a large number of ways, is more restrictive than any other DRM system I've ever seen in one key way, which is that all Steam games on an account are subject to the same simultaneous usage requirement. Many of the games I play are turn-based games which I might well leave up and running for hours at a time, returning to them occasionally. Some are little fidgets I might play for brief windows. And with Steam's system, although I can have games installed on two machines, I can't play games on two machines at once.
Yes, I am aware of the "offline mode" option. I have asked Valve, and they have stated that it is specifically forbidden to use offline mode to run games from the same library on two machines at once, no matter what. So if I have two adjacent computers, and I want to play Game A on one machine, and Game B on another, I can't do that if I got them through Steam. This is sort of weird to me, because even the most restrictive of other DRM systems I'm aware of allow you to install one game on one machine, and a different game on another machine, and run them at the same time.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Have anyone noticed that a lot of the news articles don't even get 100 comments? Some do and just a few pass the 200 mark.
May be I see just a few articles a day and that is what I get. Is someone keeping statistics?
The biggest problem I have with Steam are LAN parties. Or the lack of such possibility with a single account (=single copy of a game). Some games can be played via LAN in offline mode, but it's not guaranteed to work. And even if you convince all your friends to create a Steam account and buy the game, you'll spend the evening downloading N copies of the game once they come to your place. Fail.
There are some games that my neighbor plays that he won't even let his kids watch, much less play on their own. I remember that there was one where the (at the time) 9 year old was able to download the demo for free, which he only knew about because his dad & uncle played the game.
If this were truly a 'family' plan, you'd be able to set which games a specific account is allowed to have access to.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
As some of the other comments said, this does not lock you out of your entire Steam library while they are playing. You're free to play any game on your account, but once you do, it kicks THEM off (or maybe it's just if you play the same game as them; this point is unclear right now). That is directly contrary to what parent is claiming. How the hell did this get to +5?
Ah, Steamboxen, like XBoxen.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
if you're not always online. Can't exactly kick your friend out of a game if he's not always online, in order to let you in (where you must be online to make sure your friends aren't in a game too).
Always Online is Always Online.
...and... who does Israel then share it with?
Based on the announcement, either you must be online when sharing to validate that the lendee cannot play the game or your accounts titles are no longer lended when you go into offline mode. Any other solution would likely make it possible to have to copies of the game playing simultaneously, which would be a violation.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
"Valve's attempt at a console-killer"? Really? No, this is Valve's panicked reaction to what had been the Xbox One's planned digital game sharing, which MS had to temporarily shelve while they re-wrote how the Xbox One handles disc-based games. If you don't remember, the Xbox One was originally going to let any console owner set 10 people to be members of their family sharing plan. Those "family" members (MS stated that they didn't have to be family), could then check out any game out of the owner's library at any time.
Here's the difference between the two plans:
Steam: If the owner of a shared game wants to play any game in their library, any person playing the shared game will be booted, even if the owner wants to play a different game than the one being shared. You are accessing a shared account, not a shared game. Also, Steam knows this immediately. The person accessing the shared library "will be given a few minutes to either purchase the game or quit playing." You can infer from this that shared gaming will not support offline mode... I.E., Always-on internet access is required to access a shared library.
Xbox One: The system treated shared games as a temporary license transfer. The library wasn't shared; individual games were. Your friend could play the game you lended to them without interrupting your play of any other game on in your library. To handle this license sharing, the Xbox One would, once per day, detect the status of the games and licenses on a console. Despite the constant FUD, the Xbox One *never* required an always-on connection. The requirement was for the console to be connected to the Internet at least once a day while the system did a license check for lended games.
So yeah, you can call this a great accomplishment by Valve and their "console-killer" if you want. You can hail the greatness Valve. But you have to ask yourself, why when Microsoft did it, were they burnt the stake and when Valve does it they're uplifted as a savior?
Ive already had a friend get one of my accounts banned. Of course he's not getting access to my new one legitimately or not, but whats the new punishment for this kind of thing?
Thus, further demonstrating how arbitrary and pointless the artificial scarcity of information is in the information age.
We're going to deactivate the game that you are currently playing because there is another person who wants to run these same 1's and 0's through their computer, and we say you can't both so at the same time.... because, you know, gamers suck at economics 101: // Regardless of cost to create.
Infinite Supply = Zero Price;
The problem is that they have chosen to monetize the games' production by leveraging artificial scarcity. If instead they monetized the production up front, you know, do work and get paid to do it, then the work belongs to whomever paid for it ( in this case the public at large ), then we would have more games, more content (have to keep working to make more money), and all games would be "free" after they were created.
Imagine if Michelangelo put forth a business model whereby he would make the statue David for free, but then charge each person who looked at it a fee for experiencing the art. He'd be laughed at and ridiculed by today's businessmen... yet that's how the games industry is run.
Oh, I don't blame you... This is your first generation growing up in the Age of Information. Every species has growing pains, but the economist usually set things straight pretty fast -- You let the money makers be in charge of scarcity laws.... "Copyright". You are trillions of copies of a single cell, duplicating information is the function of life, and you made laws against it? No wonder your race doesn't have any self sustaining off-world colonies, not even a moon base, and yours is made of the same exact stuff as your planet, so you have no excuse.
Regular mass extinction events, then suddenly they stopped.... your planet is over two extinctions overdue, you're living on borrowed time, the mass extinctions just by chance coinciding with the rise of larger brained life with potential for intelligence... If you ask me, they were wrong about that. One messily gamma ray burst or medium sized asteroid is all it would have taken to wipe your whole planet out, and we've got gems like this: "Artificial Information Scarcity".... in the Information Age of all times! It would be funny if it wasn't so sad! When the next big rock comes, my vote will be to just let it hit you if you haven't figured out Economy 101 by then.
Oh but you can SHARE the information with your FRIENDS, under certain circumstances you can even use it! A better way to freely share information is the only thing you have over the other apes, and you're fucking squandering it.
either just a particularly more moronic, soulless, and greedy and set things straight pretty fast.
Imagine if real libraries (may they rest in peace) worked this way. As soon as someone checked out a book they would close the whole library.
It's a nice idea, but it will be almost useless to me unless I can play one game from the library at the some time as they play another. That is kind of what makes it a library and not a collection or compilation.
Try out this new game I bought! I'll just share it with you on steam. -- Thanks Anonymous, do you have a life and dont play games 100% of your entire breathing moment? -- Of course not! I couldn't be on /. otherwise.
I don't know why everyone assumes your guest gets kicked after you log in (my computer is always on with steam background, I dont understand why I have to log off if they get little mini-accounts) BUT if they do... I still like this feature! I get mor friends who enjoy my game interests, Steam employees get more sales. Who doesnt like people getting paid more?
This isn't as good as I'd hoped. But its not "bad". Its not taking anything away we didn't have before, and it gives us options we didn't used to have.
I am happy about this feature, but not satisfied with it.
It lets me create steam accounts for my kids and let them use my library. This is good -- now my friends won't message them, invite them to play games, etc. Now they can each have their own steam-cloud save files, and their own acheivements, etc.
Up until now I've just logged in for them, told them they aren't allowed to buy anything, and to ignore any messages or invites. And they've been good about it but this still makes it better.
But the big problem I had (and still have) with steam is the complete lock on the entire library. If my kids were playing on my account before, I couldn't play. I couldn't play the same game (and I was fine with that) but I also couldn't play a different game -- if my son is playing scribblenauts I can't play Left 4 Dead. And I have always disagreed with that.
As it stands now, the situation there hasn't changed. If my son is logged in to his account, playing a game on my library I still can't play a different game. So for me, although this feature is a step forward it still falls short.
It's a good thing I have a different account for each game. Since I usually only play one game for a period of a few weeks, switching between accounts isn't a problem. I can now share a game once I get bored with it, and when I go to play another game, I won't boot my friend out while he's playing. Originally, I did this because I wanted to maintain the ability to resell my games, which I've done a few times, by selling the account.
I can imagine a budding entrepreneur starting his own business, renting out Steam games to his classmates. Until now, this wouldn't have been possible because he'd have to rent out access to the account, and the renter could change the P/W to prevent the owner from taking it back. Now he can just give his customer access to the library, and revoke it after an agreed upon time. It would be completely against the TOS/EULA, but he'd be unlikely to get caught if he kept his customer base confined to his school.
It's against the ToS to have multiple accounts in Steam.
They don't really care because it allows them to say they have "10 million subscribers, 3 million on at this time!" because you have multiple accounts.
But they can, in theory, REMOVE EVERY GAME LICENSE you rent off them for this.
Time for dad to get some gaming done.
This is stupid and gives me no additional advantage to what I already have. My family already has my Steam password. Steam is installed on my desktop, my laptop, and my wife's computer. When she is playing one of HER games that WE bought and paid for under OUR account, it locks ME out from playing one of MY games. This is just stupid and the one and only thing I have against Steam.
Thank you so very much for this awesome new feature Valve. I feel so grateful that you have graciously allowed me to share my purchases from your company with my friends and family.
In other news, book publishers are going to be providing us with the same fantastically free and open benefits.
From now on, you will be able to share your books with other people. The only catch is that if you have loaned a book to a friend and want to read a different book, your friend will be notified and have a few minutes to finish reading the page they are on before the book is magically yanked from their hands and put back in your library.
Imagine the freedom! The things we own* will finally be able to shared with others! With the almost complete absence of annoyingly restrictive limitations!
Valve, I really can't explain how appreciative I am of the fact that you are allowing me to do what I want with the things I own*. Truly a great day for openness and freedom.
* Yes, I keep using the word own. When they use the word "Buy" rather than "Rent" or "Lease", that should imply ownership.
So they added functionality, but it's not the functionality you wanted, so the entire feature is worthless?
Christ.
It's barely added functionality. If you use your steam account on anything approaching a regular basis the feature is useless. For a collection of casual gamers who play half an hour here or there some utility exists. However, a core component of Steam’s audience: hard core gamers with large libraries, will often be using their accounts and therefore be ineligible to share. For the hard core gamer, Steam's bread and butter, this feature is a carrot followed by a punch in the face.
Apple’s policy of five authorized machines is more sensible and actually enables family sharing across multiple computers and family members. Something more akin to that, but with a division of accounts, would be truly useful.
Steam must be for hard-core gamers only, and just because they may not use this feature, it's now "barely added functionality"?
I'm glad I can let my brother play my games without having to worry about him mucking up my profile, market, inventory, friends, CC# info, etc. I guess I'm sad that I cannot let 10 of my friends play free games off my account at the same time while I'm also using my games and account?
It's really grasping for straws to shake angrily at Valve here.
I mean at the beginning of the year there was supposed to be all these big things coming out of Valve, like the Steambox, but then it all kind of just fizzled into water vapor.
Then I also remembered that Valve is a company that takes 6 years to release anything. So we might see the Steambox in 2020, just in time to compete with the Nokiabox Two, PlaySamsung 5 and Nintendo's WiiilUPleezeBiiMii.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
still can't play different steam games on different computers in the same household --- ya know, like you can if you bought retail versions of the games.
fuck you, valve.
This is sharing the game.
If you have a console and two games for it, you can give your brother, who ALSO has a console one game and you can play the other. "they go even a little further, as it is not tied to a single computer", doesn't this require that they buy a PC?
If you have a PC and a Steam library and your brother has a PC and a Steam library, you cannot share your game with him while you play another.
If he doesn't have a PC then he cannot play the game when you're using the PC.
I guess I'm sad that I cannot let 10 of my friends play free games off my account at the same time while I'm also using my games and account?
Absolutely. If you'd bought physical copies of each of those games, you could lend them out individually. Valve is using their power - the control over you they have through DRM - to make their product less flexible than it would be in a properly competitive marketplace.
Well, technically this is still beta, so I'm wondering if maybe they'll be tweaking it to allow multiple users playing different games on the same library simultaneously. (Although I'm not going to hold my breath.) One way off the top of my head is maybe just checking the ip address of the two computers trying to access the library at the same time and if they are on the same internal network (in your home or whatnot) they can play concurrently. That way it can be shared in the household but not just a pool of games for your 10 friends across the world.
That said, this is cool for letting your siblings or kids play while you're at work or something or trying to get your friends hooked on a game (so they'll buy a copy to play with you) when the demo (or lack of one) doesn't cut it. I hope they also allow some personal settings tweaking for it. I'd like to set an automatic time frame when the library will be accessible to family and automatically kick them off (after warnings of course). That way I can let them play when I'm at work and boot them before I get home so I can hop on right away.
Maybe if one brave soul lights a candle, we'll be able to see that the sky will not fall if we share a piece of copyrighted material with a friend. Hopefully other interests will follow suit.
Personally I see [local multiplayer] as a major benefit of console gaming that has kept me from gaming on PCs for decades.
First connect a PC to an HDTV or other large monitor. Then plug in USB gamepads, such as Xbox 360 controllers you bought at a pawn shop. Then install something like Blur, Dungeon Defenders, Lego $MOVIE, Street Fighter IV, or Trine, or any of several games on this list. What's stopping that?
I have Street Fighter I want to play with a friend. We both show up and play on the same screen. [...] The scenario I've described is exactly the same for Steam as it is for consoles here.
The alleged difference is that a randomly chosen multiplayer console game is more likely to support Street Fighter-style local multiplayer than a randomly chosen multiplayer Steam game.
Back when I still played Tetris, the Super NES supported playing Tetris and Dr. Mario at the same time.
How about a much more real and everyday scenario: multiple devices for a single account.
I've a desktop and a laptop; not unusual amongst gamers. If I want to download my steam library into my laptop, I've to stop playing on my desktop. This actually happened to me recently: I had a plane trip some hours later, I could either play a game (desktop), or download one for the trip(laptop), not both!
it turns out you make the most money following the lowest common denominator.
The lowest common denominator is one PC in a house, and not all gamers live alone.
There is no real set standard on how to support additional players.
One standard has existed since 1998 when Windows 98 added USB gamepad drivers: DirectInput. Another has existed since 2005 when the Xbox 360 came out: XInput.
From a game design perspective, the LCD is the game designer has no restrictions beyond the hardware. But if you tell a game designer to design a game with local multiplayer, that is a restrict beyond the hardware, which wouldn't need to be addressed if you just let them turn it to online multiplayer.
But if you tell a game designer to design a game with online multiplayer, that is a restrict beyond the hardware, which wouldn't need to be addressed if you just let them turn it to local multiplayer. It is a restrict because it requires the user to move to an area where wired broadband Internet access is affordable and/or buy an additional PC and an additional copy of the game for each additional player.
Simple example: poker. How can you ensure each player can only see his own hand, and nobody else's?
I see your point about games with intentionally limited information. But there also exist games with intentionally unlimited information that must propagate instantly. Simple example: karate. How can you ensure each player sees each punch and kick as it is thrown, and not 200 ms later? How can you ensure each player owns a gaming PC, as opposed to a PC with integrated graphics more suited for word processing and Facebook, and a wired broadband connection, as opposed to satellite or cellular broadband or dial-up because the user lives in an area without cable or DSL or fiber?
Board games are relatively cheap to make, so you can still money making and selling them (and thanks to wear and tear, there's a market to sell the same old game over and over). Video games do not share that luxury.
By "video games" do you mean AAA games or indie games? I was under the impression that an indie game could be developed and brought to market on not much more than a board game budget.
But there also exist games with intentionally unlimited information that must propagate instantly. Simple example: karate.
Again, those are hardware issues. The first computer that ran pong wouldn't be able to give you By "video games" do you mean AAA games or indie games? I was under the impression that an indie game could be developed and brought to market on not much more than a board game budget.
And your indie video game will reflect that low budget (save for exceptions), whereas a board game can probably compete with other "AAA" board games out there.
You can go indie on board games too you know. You might be go with card games which you can even let people download and print the cards themselves, saving you the cost of printing and distributing.
But there also exist games with intentionally unlimited information that must propagate instantly. Simple example: karate.
Again, those are hardware issues. The first computer that ran pong wouldn't be able to give you less than (I used bracket, messed up the quote) 200 ms response times on a modern (or even not-so modern) karate game
And that one PC, as I said, only has 1 keyboard,1 mouse, and 0 gamepads
Single player would work with the keyboard that ships with the computer and would give the player enough of a taste of the game to see whether to buy a gamepad. The same is true of console games.
and again as I said, is placed outside the living room
A second PC purchased for home theater use would already be placed in the living room. A laptop would be easy to carry into the room with the big TV. Even a primary desktop PC purchased for uses other than home theater uses would have a 21-24" 1080p monitor, which is still physically larger than the 13-19" bedroom TVs common in the era of GoldenEye 007 on Nintendo 64.
Most games support keyboard control as a minimum
A game's single player mode would support the keyboard, and gamepads would be required only for multiplayer. Compare to any game console, which includes only enough controllers for one player, and controllers for other players are sold separately. I don't remember seeing more than one controller bundled with a console since the early Super NES era.
If you look at the game box, they'll tell you how fast of a connection you need, right next to CPU, RAM, hard disk, etc. Those are the system or hardware requirements.
Likewise in the requirements on the box of a PC game supporting local multiplayer.
Requires 1 controller per player
Supported controllers: Keyboard (player 1 only), Xbox 360 controller, USB HID joysticks
The first computer that ran pong wouldn't be able to give you sub-200 ms response times on a modern (or even not-so modern) karate game
True, first-generation consoles (Odyssey, Pong, and the like) couldn't run a fighting game. By the late second generation (ColecoVision, MSX, Commodore 64), I estimate that the hardware was there, even though the genre wasn't refined until mid-fourth generation. But still, both PC and console hardware became able to guarantee sub-200 ms response several years before ISPs became able to guarantee sub-200 ms response.
and how can you ensure each player will have his own gamepad or joystick?
You can't ensure that even on consoles. But you'll have to admit that it's a lot cheaper for someone to buy three gamepads than to buy three extra PCs and three extra video cards.