Steam game lending system, Family Sharing announced

[Hagan]

Why thank you, my life is now forever changed by knowing someone you know looks like Anna Sweet. I will now go tell all my friends that someone on the internet knows someone who looks like Anna Sweet and I am sure their lives will also be forever changed.

Humour... A rare trait

 

[Kwaai]

"Hello,
Welcome to the Family Sharing Beta"

Got this today

 

[AlphaJohn]

Sorry for Necro wake, but could not find a peoper Steam family sharing thread to share this sad new development but here goes:

Steam finally block/broke the last exit in family sharing in one small update;

7 February - Steam Client Beta Update - February 6th
We have just updated the beta with the following changes:

General

• Disabled Family Sharing in Offline mode
• Game server IPs in the favorites list will now automatically update if the game server is using a persistent game server account
• Reorganized files for smaller client downloads in future updates

Linux
Updated steam-runtime

And with that they broke what I liked most about family sharing the ability for me and my son to play a game at the same time. Pre SFS I use to log into my sons computer so that he install my games and was able to play them in offline, then came SFS and I no longer needed to log into his PC as I could just share my game and he could install them. He still could not play them when I was in a game but the easy fix was for one of us to play while offline, no more.

Thank you Steam, with this update you just broke what I liked most about SFS, and that was removing the need to log into his PC, but now you officially made SFS useless to me as I can return to my old method.

 

[Wyzak]

Sorry for Necro wake, but could not find a peoper Steam family sharing thread to share this sad new development but here goes:

Steam finally block/broke the last exit in family sharing in one small update;

And with that they broke what I liked most about family sharing the ability for me and my son to play a game at the same time. Pre SFS I use to log into my sons computer so that he install my games and was able to play them in offline, then came SFS and I no longer needed to log into his PC as I could just share my game and he could install them. He still could not play them when I was in a game but the easy fix was for one of us to play while offline, no more.

Thank you Steam, with this update you just broke what I liked most about SFS, and that was removing the need to log into his PC, but now you officially made SFS useless to me as I can return to my old method.

Sounds to me like you were exploiting the system, and it was fixed. If you want to play with your son do what everybody else does and buy two copies of the game?

 

[Clive Woofer]

Yeah, sorry AlphaJohn but I'm going to have to agree with Wyzak here. It was made clear right from the start that the point of Family Sharing is not to allow two people to play your games at once, but that when you share your library it is made unavailable to yourself.

I'm surprised this exploit made it into the program in the first place.

 

[AlphaJohn]

Sounds to me like you were exploiting the system, and it was fixed. If you want to play with your son do what everybody else does and buy two copies of the game?

Is it really an Exploit, or was I expecting too much? When you buy a normal game disk retail you always had the option to let your brother/son play the games that you no longer playing. This in my eye's was what SFS should have been about but I guess I was wrong.

For me its not really sharing if 2 people can not play any games at the same time and note I am not talking about the same game. If I start any game and my son was playing any other game in my library he could go Offline to continue playing. This is no longer the case SFS.

There is still 2 ways you can get around this.
A) Game Owner logs into both accounts and one play's in offline mode on any one of the logons.
B) Game Owner plays in offline mode while the other user play's online.



Edit: Ok scratch that even If I go offline my son have no more access to my games. They show but the moment he hits play it takes him to the store page. Guess that is it, may as well remove the family sharing from both my PC's and log into both with on my account.

 

[Clive Woofer]

Well, think about it. It doesn't make logical sense. Why would Steam implement a feature that basically enables groups of friends to buy one game and share it between all of them?

The way you want to use SFS was never the way it was intended to be used and this was made clear right from the start.

 

[Wyzak]

Family sharing was never intended to allow 2 people to play the same copy of the game at the same time. You can't do that with a DVD either.

 

[AlphaJohn]

Family sharing was never intended to allow 2 people to play the same copy of the game at the same time. You can't do that with a DVD either.

No where did I say play the same game at the same time, did I?

SFS shares most of your games bot only 1 person has access to the collection at any time and both needs to be online for said access to work.

Well, think about it. It doesn't make logical sense. Why would Steam implement a feature that basically enables groups of friends to buy one game and share it between all of them?

Nothing stops this with normal Steam account, without the need for family sharing.

 

[Wyzak]

Steam finally block/broke the last exit in family sharing in one small update;

And with that they broke what I liked most about family sharing the ability for me and my son to play a game at the same time..

Right here. If you aren't playing it at the same time that update won't break the family sharing.

 

[AlphaJohn]

Right here. If you aren't playing it at the same time that update won't break the family sharing.

A game not the game

And with that they broke what I liked most about family sharing the ability for me and my son to play a game at the same time.

And with that they broke what I liked most about family sharing the ability for me and my son to play the game at the same time.

See how the meaning change

 

[Avatar]

Right here. If you aren't playing it at the same time that update won't break the family sharing.

He wants to be able to play CoD while his son plays Minecraft, not have them both play CoD at the same time. It's fair enough, IMO, but maybe this is a sign that you should buy your son his own games!

EDIT: Or better yet, have him buy his own. With pocket money he had to earn, like I did, by mowing the lawn, and washing cars and dogs. In the snow. It was uphill. Both ways. Get off my lawn.

 

[AlphaJohn]

He wants to be able to play CoD while his son plays Minecraft, not have them both play CoD at the same time. It's fair enough, IMO, but maybe this is a sign that you should buy your son his own games!

Or buy boxed games again

Aaah the good old days when a family only had to buy one box for the family. I know I hated the securerom CD checks but somewhere deep inside I miss those days....

 

[Wyzak]

Ah ok sorry I misunderstood, but I still don't understand why it will no longer work then?

If he wants to play a different game that's on your account, you can still borrow the game to him and then play another game on your system? That is how family sharing was intended to work. Why does he have to be offline etc? What am I missing?

 

[Clive Woofer]

Ah ok sorry I misunderstood, but I still don't understand why it will no longer work then?

If he wants to play a different game that's on your account, you can still borrow the game to him and then play another game on your system? That is how family sharing was intended to work. Why does he have to be offline etc? What am I missing?

Family sharing will kick his son out of the game the moment AlphaJohn launches any other game on his Steam account.

This has been revealed to be how SFS works almost right from the start. You don't share single games, you share your entire library.

Nothing stops this with normal Steam account, without the need for family sharing.

Which, incidentally, would mean you have to give out your login details, which is against the Steam ToS.

 

[Avatar]

Ah ok sorry I misunderstood, but I still don't understand why it will no longer work then?

If he wants to play a different game that's on your account, you can still borrow the game to him and then play another game on your system? That is how family sharing was intended to work. Why does he have to be offline etc? What am I missing?

He can only borrow the whole account, i.e. when he wants to play any game on AJ's account, AJ is locked out. That's the intended function. A little silly, like I said in my previous post, but also understandable from a business point of view.

 

[AlphaJohn]

Ah ok sorry I misunderstood, but I still don't understand why it will no longer work then?

If he wants to play a different game that's on your account, you can still borrow the game to him and then play another game on your system? That is how family sharing was intended to work. Why does he have to be offline etc? What am I missing?

That is what I am complaining about, 1st I thought just like you but soon realized that Valve had other idea's.(only one person can access a library at a time) Even after that I found a workaround using offline mode but this loophole is now also fixed.

Family sharing is now just the sharing of a library and only one person can access said library at any one time. If it was shared to you, you have to be online to access it and if the owner is offline you no longer have access to that library.

 

[Wyzak]

Family sharing will kick his son out of the game the moment AlphaJohn launches any other game on his Steam account.

This has been revealed to be how SFS works almost right from the start. You don't share single games, you share your entire library.

Oh well that sucks. I hope it's just a temporary thing that they intend to fix later on.

 

[AlphaJohn]

Oh well that sucks. I hope it's just a temporary thing that they intend to fix later on.

Not if you see the SFS forums, this is how it is/was suppose to work.

If you want to share a game in your house, go back to buying boxed versions or log into both PC's and play offline.

 

[Wyzak]

Not if you see the SFS forums, this is how it is/was suppose to work.

If you want to share a game in your house, go back to buying boxed versions or log into both PC's and play offline.

Doesn't work anymore. Boxes normally only have Steam keys in them and then the Steam install files.