Steam Families announced with parental controls, no more library locking

Wow, that's a welcome change! I didn't think they would implement it, as it opens Steam to a lot of abuse by "families". Hopefully they don't do a 180° after a while, like Netflix did - and also hopefully people won't simply abuse it...


Last edited by pb on 18 March 2024 at 8:09 pm UTC

Huge improvement based on the description, and very timely for my family. The whole-library-lock was a non-starter, and was very much pushing me to GOG. Though GOG still has the edge for multiplayer; would be nice if Steam could give developers the option of allowing multiple simultaneous of one copy, at least if all on the same local network. Time to check out the beta.

Love to see it. My partner got her first gaming PC at the end of last year and only has a handful of games in her library. Now with this change she pretty much has 2000.

Wow! Frankly, I never thought I'd see the day...

However: "Family Sharing is a feature that developers may opt their games out of for technical or other reasons at any time. Visit the Steam Store to see a list of games that currently support Family Sharing."

And: "it is understandable that some day you may need to join a new Steam Family. Adults can leave a family at any time, however, they will need to wait 1 year from when they joined the previous family to create or join a new family."

Still, this was my major peeve with Steam by far, so any improvement is better than locking my entire account when my daughters and I just want to play different games...


Last edited by seamoose on 18 March 2024 at 8:21 pm UTC

Currently, with Steam Family Sharing, if one person is playing a game your whole library is locked. You can either boot them off, or wait. Now, that's changed. As long as you're playing different games - it's all good. [...] if other members in your Family Group have a copy, multiple people can play the same game at the same time.

Like it should have been, and I don't even have to come to the comments to ask.

I've purchased 500+ games and the whole -- I can't play a free to play game while a family member is playing some other game I bought is not sensible at all.

Hail Gaben & VOVO -- one of the last companies who truly care about their customers.

This is how Capitalism was supposed to be.

I really don't like companies behelden to Wallstreet Stock Investors. The companies have 2 masters and they always pick their stock holders over their customers -- infact it's legally codified that they are required to otherwise they could be sued for not squeezing every dollar and cent.

That's what the symbolism of the Harkonnen lore in Dune is all about.

Remember when corporations weren't legally considered people?

/rant-off

Good Guy Valve delivers once again -- no wonder I am proud to return their good in kind.

This is huge! And I think it won't be abused as we think. There is a very big problem with sharing with random: if they get banned when using your copy of a game, you will be banned too. So yeah, sure, go ahead sharing your library with randos... Until one of them gets banned in your favourite online game and you get banned too.

To be clear, I am very ok with this as it will prevent you from sharing with people you don't trust. So nice, an awesome change that was about time to happen!!

"Family Sharing is a feature that developers may opt their games out of for technical or other reasons at any time. Visit the Steam Store to see a list of games that currently support Family Sharing."

The words "at any time" do invoke concern.

Not a fan of that -- if when I purchase a product that feature is included and declared, I think they should only be able to turn it off for new purchases.

A handshake is a handshake.

This is great! What would be even better is if I could play a game with the same account on two devices simultaneously.

Like, I got two Steam Decks (OLED and LCD) and it would be awesome if I could play a game I own with a friend.

Noice! Been wishing for this a long time too. But probably wouldn't be able to use it for long as for some reasons shared libraries randomly disappear for me without changing anything at all over and over again ... :/

I really don't like companies beholden to Wallstreet Stock Investors. The companies have 2 masters and they always pick their stock holders over their customers -- infact it's legally codified that they are required to otherwise they could be sued for not squeezing every dollar and cent.

That's not really true. Officers of the company have a duty to act for the benefit of the company, and can be sued if they don't - that much is true. But that doesn't mean they're required to maximizes short term profit at the detriment of long term value - that would just be dumb.

I can't play a free to play game while a family member is playing some other game I bought

This was fixed some time ago.

I guess the "one person is banned, you're all banned" rule is meant to safeguard against a dozen people all sharing the same game library, but I can't imagine developers and publishers are going to be too thrilled about the possibility of this feature cutting into their sales.

They should just put a Spotify-like limit on family size - like (pluck a number out the air) 6. Sure, there are families bigger than 6 out there, but the kind of family that can afford 6 household members the hardware and internet connection to take advantage of this feature are a) few and far between (I suspect) and b) probably quite rich and not the target audience of this kind of sharing.

EDIT: And... I should have googled before commenting. They've already done so, and it is indeed max 6 members in a Family Group.

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/054C-3167-DD7F-49D4


Last edited by scaine on 18 March 2024 at 11:12 pm UTC

Wow, that sounds quite nice. Now Valve only needs to finally introduce age verification for Germany ^^

Thank god there’s gonna be a time where I need to pass down my steam library to be little brother

I really don't like companies beholden to Wallstreet Stock Investors. The companies have 2 masters and they always pick their stock holders over their customers -- infact it's legally codified that they are required to otherwise they could be sued for not squeezing every dollar and cent.

That's not really true. Officers of the company have a duty to act for the benefit of the company, and can be sued if they don't - that much is true. But that doesn't mean they're required to maximizes short term profit at the detriment of long term value - that would just be dumb.

It being dumb would not make it untrue. The reality as far as I can tell is somewhat fuzzy--no, the law probably does not specify that the benefit of the company == short term profit to the detriment of long term value. And quite a bit of the shift towards that kind of thinking is actually related to executive compensation schemes involving stock options and such, which motivate executives to juice the stock price now. But US economic thinking has for some time had a culture emphasizing short term shareholder returns, based on ideas put forward by some very influential (if wrong) economic thinkers (these thinkers, in turn, were influential because they suited the profit motives of some very rich short-term profiteers who did not want to be regulated). As a result, if a US court had to decide what the benefit of a company was, it might well operate as if these influential economic thinkers were correct.

I guess the "one person is banned, you're all banned" rule is meant to safeguard against a dozen people all sharing the same game library, but I can't imagine developers and publishers are going to be too thrilled about the possibility of this feature cutting into their sales.

I think it is more of a technical reason where the licensed copy of that game is banned, not the individual user. If your family member gets that copy of the game banned, no one can use it anymore.

I guess the "one person is banned, you're all banned" rule is meant to safeguard against a dozen people all sharing the same game library, but I can't imagine developers and publishers are going to be too thrilled about the possibility of this feature cutting into their sales.

That's not how it works.

The person who got themselves banned is banned. The person who owned the copy of the game (if there are multiple copies in the pool you need to say whose you are playing) also gets banned. Everyone else in the pool can keep playing.

This is AWESOME

Thank god there’s gonna be a time where I need to pass down my steam library to be little brother

You don't need to pass down your Steam library to be a little brother :p


Last edited by based on 19 March 2024 at 5:47 am UTC

but I can't imagine developers and publishers are going to be too thrilled about the possibility of this feature cutting into their sales.

The primal human -- using the lower brain functions is definately going to be afraid of "loosing sales".

But kick in higher brain functions & logic and get the opposite result. The more people that play your game the more The Network Effect happens and the more sales.

What's worse than people playing your game and talking about it among family? Nobody playing your game and nobody talking about it.

Lower & Higher brain functions can be a funny thing.