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 http://store.steampowered.com/sharing/.
Deathbishop wrote on Sep 11, 2013, 16:19:
Yea, the only scenario I can see this benefiting from is the two PC home that has a stay at home wife. Guy goes to work and wife can access the steam library on the 2nd pc. The only true benefit is the wife isn't logging into Steam with the guy's login but really, what's the point of that? Lending to a friend makes some sense, the friend would have to know for certain that the owner is not on his/her account during a certain time. This gets much more complicated when you multiply by 9 more people (to a max of 10).
Like others said, it really only saves you from giving your credentials out (and to a certain extent, it makes sense due to wallet).
ItBurn wrote on Sep 11, 2013, 15:59:
Are you guys sure you have to be logged out of Steam for someone else to play your game? Seemed from what I read that you can play another game while the other guy plays the game from your library.
Edit: Yeah, I reread and it seems it's for the whole library.
Not remotely useful in real practice.
"simultaneous usage of an account's library is not allowed" = dealbreaker
Verno wrote on Sep 11, 2013, 15:28:xXBatmanXx wrote on Sep 11, 2013, 15:19:
Actually very useful. I don't think people understand or know how to read....
Errr dude...
From the Steam FAQ:"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."
Nevermind, saw your edit
The real question is what do they consider an active library? If I'm logged in? Or can I be idle but just not playing something? The latter would be very useful, I rarely actually logout of Steam.
Verno wrote on Sep 11, 2013, 15:11:DangerDog wrote on Sep 11, 2013, 15:09:
Going to be creating new accounts for major game purchases, what do you think is a fair price to charge for renting a game for a few days?
Oh man, I didn't even think about that. All you need for Steam is an email these days, don't even need the CC anymore due to Wallet cards being sold at retail. I suspect they would get pissed at a bunch of account creations from a single IP though.
xXBatmanXx wrote on Sep 11, 2013, 15:19:
Actually very useful. I don't think people understand or know how to read....
"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."
Blue wrote on Sep 11, 2013, 15:02:nin wrote on Sep 11, 2013, 14:51:Is there a limit to the number of devices I can authorize to share my Library?
Yes. A Steam account may authorize Family Sharing on up to 10 devices at a given time.
Reading is fun!
Added this for clarity: "Family Sharing is enabled in one of two ways: You can either locally enable sharing in Account Settings, with Family Sharing & Devices, or remotely respond to a user’s Steam request to share your previously installed games via email."