Steam Family Sharing

[TrainingKimpas]

Coming Soon: Players who share computers can also share their Steam games

September 11, 2013 – Steam Family Sharing, a new service feature that allows close friends and family members to share their libraries of Steam games, is coming to Steam, a leading platform for the delivery and management of PC, Mac, and Linux games and software. The feature will become available next week, in limited beta on Steam.

Steam Family Sharing is designed for close friends and family members to play one another's Steam games while each earning their own Steam achievements and storing their own saves and application data to the Steam cloud. It's all enabled by authorizing a shared computer.

“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.

For more information about Steam Family Sharing and the beta program, please visit store.steampowered.com/sharing.

http://store.steampowered.com/sharing

Source

[Deleted]

This makes me very happy - I have over 300 games on steam and now my husband and some close friends are going to be able to play them when I'm not

[PACOX]

Something thats always been off about digital downloads on the PC was the inability to share games. If I could do it on my PS3 then why couldn't I do it on my PC?

[wildemu]

bad idea, for pirating reasons.

[Deleted]

bad idea, for pirating reasons.

Why how does THIS increase the change of pirating?
But i find it to be a great idea, but as many, probaly most, my sister has her own PC, so unfutanaly she cant borrow any of my games, had hoped it was shareable between family or house IP or something so means nothing for me, but is really great for other people cheer to all who will use it

[wildemu]

Set up a forum where people just exchange each other's account info. Once you're done with his or her library, drop him off the list and move on to another. With no revenue except the initial purchase.

As a pc developer, this feature would piss me off.

[Kalyyn]

Damn, never saw that coming. That's pretty cool though.

[xerus]

Its nice that you can let someone try a game when you aren't using steam, but if someone is playing one of your games and you want to play one they get kicked off.

[zealo]

Set up a forum where people just exchange each other's account info. Once you're done with his or her library, drop him off the list and move on to another. With no revenue except the initial purchase.

As a pc developer, this feature would piss me off.

Im fairly certain there will be systems to block people connecting from far away from each others as this is meant for family and close friends, but i can't tell for certain as im not involved in the development

[Konviction]

Set up a forum where people just exchange each other's account info. Once you're done with his or her library, drop him off the list and move on to another. With no revenue except the initial purchase.

As a pc developer, this feature would piss me off.

^^ This would only work for single player games, any sort of multiplayer aspects will be nullified unless you aren't playing the game any longer.

I can see this being used for "shared" accounts where people would get together and have a single account in which they just add games to instead of multiple accounts, allowing everyone to access whatever games at any time.

[Ratboy]

^^ This would only work for single player games, any sort of multiplayer aspects will be nullified unless you aren't playing the game any longer.

I can see this being used for "shared" accounts where people would get together and have a single account in which they just add games to instead of multiple accounts, allowing everyone to access whatever games at any time.

Can a friend and I share a library and both play at the same time?
No, a shared library may only be accessed by one user at a time.

Only one person would be able to access one game from that shared account.

[Dasffion]

Im fairly certain there will be systems to block people connecting from far away from each others as this is meant for family and close friends, but i can't tell for certain as im not involved in the development

I wasn't aware that you couldn't have family live far away from you 8-O There will probably be restrictions in place though that will make it unwise to share with complete strangers, like having to provide personal information.

[Deleted]

Set up a forum where people just exchange each other's account info. Once you're done with his or her library, drop him off the list and move on to another. With no revenue except the initial purchase.

As a pc developer, this feature would piss me off.

You could still only ever share with one person though, because only one person can be playing the games on the acc at one time or they get kicked off. I'm not sure many people will be giving out their accounts on sites, and I'm sure there will be some sort of terms and conditions about making money off it (like people selling accounts or now "renting" them out), getting banned.

I personally buy a lot of games, but I have friends who pirate games who I will give my account access for, and I may be far more inclined to purchase a game on release myself if I know that multiple people in my family/friends can get their moneys worth off it.

[xerus]

I can see this being used for "shared" accounts where people would get together and have a single account in which they just add games to instead of multiple accounts, allowing everyone to access whatever games at any time.

Only one person can play any one game at a time. Two people cannot access a shared library at the same time.

[zealo]

I wasn't aware that you couldn't have family live far away from you 8-O There will probably be restrictions in place though that will make it unwise to share with complete strangers, like having to provide personal information.

Of course you can have family that lives far away but i don't think this system is intended to make sharing games between people that lives in different countries possible, more like sharing games between people that can see each others without needing to take a flight across half the continent.

[Dasffion]

Of course you can have family that lives far away but i don't think this system is intended to make sharing games between people that lives in different countries possible, more like sharing games between people that can see each others without needing to take a flight across half the continent.

100% pure speculation and I'd be disappointed if they actually implemented it like this. I live in Texas and I'd like to be able to share games with my family in California.

[wildemu]

^^ This would only work for single player games, any sort of multiplayer aspects will be nullified unless you aren't playing the game any longer.

I can see this being used for "shared" accounts where people would get together and have a single account in which they just add games to instead of multiple accounts, allowing everyone to access whatever games at any time.

Well, I hope this will be regionalized because what's stopping someone from creating a lone account just for a multiplayer fps, and then sell it to someone who may be living in an area that has a delayed release.

This also goes for single player games where europeans may be ahead of us with a release, and vice versa.

The idea that one person can only access it and then gets the boot when you hop on is also quite ridiculous. Hopefully, that doesn't pass beta.

[bbr]

Eh, my GF just logs into my steam account, no hassle,. all games available to both of us.
I don't really see this as "whoa news".

[Deleted]

Eh, my GF just logs into my steam account, no hassle,. all games available to both of us.
I don't really see this as "whoa news".

In theory I wouldn't mind my husband having my acc details, but I have 70+ friends on steam and I actively chat to a lot of them throughout the night so it would be a bit awkward him getting all my msgs whilst playing games and constantly having to say "Sorry, she's not on this account right now..". I also have a bunch of friends I wouldn't really want to have my password and talking to my friends from my username, as well as the fact that my payment details are saved etc. but I would be more than happy for them to try out some games whilst I'm not playing.

I assume that we will still maintain the chat and social functions of our own accounts whilst other people are accessing our library, which is quite important to me and I think probably quite a few other people.

[Mister K]

Techspot Article

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.

Valve keeps surprising me, keep it up! Origin, well blargh!