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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.
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.
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.
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/
Actually, Microsoft was going to do *much* better than this: they would allow two people to use the same account *AT THE SAME TIME* which Steam (still) does not allow. Two different people could play different games that were both purchased on the same account. Steam doesn't even let two people use the same account at the same time at all.
The always-online thing was, I think, a bigger deal than the first-sale issue; Steam has *never* respected the doctrine of first sale, and people sing its praises all the time. All DRM (including both Steam and downloaded games on the Xbox) on so-called "purchases" can go die in a fire, along with everybody pushing it.
(I'm OK with DRM on things that are explicitly rentals, like Netflix, so long as they're reimburse me if it doesn't work for me because of the DRM.)
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
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.
"Wake me when I can buy/sell games 2nd hand over Steam. THAT would actually make me happy.. =)"
That's a nonsense reason to be mad at Steam. Every penny that you think you would be getting is more than made up for by being able to buy at steep discounts. I got Black Ops 2 for half price shortly after it was released. It's still going for 50 bucks pre-owned at Game Stop on 360. Even following a trade in process like that I would be at the same place monetarily but no longer the owner of the game. The only thing that would be remotely close to being worth it monetarily would be an open market where people could trade/sell games but that won't happen. For Steam to even keep on existing it can't happen. The liability issues alone would make them never even think of implementing such a stupid idea. How could they possibly endorse a system that had no ability to cross reference the millions of transactions that would take place with every system out there to find out if that cd key had been banned from online play? VAC would be easy but that's not the only ban you would have to worry about. Do you think, even with a seven thousand page TOS, that people wouldn't be suing the crap out of Valve every time someone sold them a game that they couldn't play online? Its a PR nightmare, a litigation nightmare and would screw the rest of us that are smart enough to see that only suckers buy games at full price instead of waiting a couple of months and getting a 50-90% discount.
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 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.
Yes and if everyone you're sharing your steam account with lived under the same roof as you, then this would be pretty bad. All the negative reaction people are having boils down to: "I cannot give my friends free copies of games, bullshit."
This is sharing a Steam account like you'd share your physical Xbox. This isn't sharing per-game. This makes people angry for some reason, getting "shafted" on something they didn't know existed 30 seconds ago.
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.
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?