Hello! We are excited to announce Steam Families, available today in the Steam Beta Client. Steam Families is a collection of new and existing family-related features. It replaces both Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View, giving you a single location to manage which games your family can access and when they can play. Create a Steam Family To get started, you can create a Steam Family and then invite up to 5 family members.
This is amazing! And a long-overdue change. Now both of my kids can simultaneously use my library as long as they play a different game. Before, only one of my kids was allowed to borrow from my library, the rest of it was locked down.
Edge case that almost affects nobody. Just make 1 family for all or create a second acc and put it in a second family. And if they add it it would probably be abused more than used for it’s intended use.
Lots of people are in multiple families. Probably even most people. Most people have two sets of cousins. And lots of people have a family of their parents and siblings and a family of their spouse and kids. I have steam library sharing with my partner and my partner has library sharing with its roommate, who has library sharing with other people. Is this new system gonna screw us?
There is a max amount of people and they have to be in the same country otherwise it doesn’t matter so far. But they are probably watching it for abuse.
Plus queer people are more likely to have international families due to the discrimination. Especially queer people from queerphobic countries like Saudi Arabia. This rule change is homophobic and racist.
A bunch of people are going to become related all of a sudden really quick!
Honestly though, my partner and I already use the family sharing extensively, so I hope this is an improvement. It is kind of tedious right now that you have to physically log in to the other person’s machine to be able to add them to your family sharing plan, so any kind of improvement on that front is welcome.
We have three accounts linked: mine, SO, kids (they share one). I occasionally gift games to my SO and kids accounts, and each time I need to login to their accounts to accept/add the gift key or whatever. I go through this nonsense so my kids, SO, and I can play different games at the same time, but the kids can still only play one at a time (hasn’t been a problem so far).
I have three kids and haven’t made individual accounts because it’s annoying enough as it is to manage three, but if this makes it easier, I’ll probably get them their own accounts.
I already tried it, apply ASAP for the Family Beta. Now both of my kids can simultaneously use my library as long as they play a different game. Before, only one of my kids was allowed to borrow from my library, the rest of it was locked down. Amazing update.
There was a pretty big work around for that, as long as only one person is in “online” mode on Steam, you can technically have infinite people playing at once. Of course that only works if most people want to play a single player or local LAN game.
We have 1278 paid games that are included and 55 that are excluded from family sharing. Seemed to be mostly ubi, rockstar and ea games. Games that you claimed while they had a limited 100% discount are also excluded. The last few are live-service or mmo games.
“Family sharing” is now a feature listed on every store page. Same place as singleplayer, trading cards, cloud saves and similar.
As far as I know no major changes has happened in which games support it, but that may change now that sharing gets more attention.
As far as I know, it’s mainly games with DRM that might trigger on multiple installs/computers. So companies will disable family sharing. Not sure how common this is.
I used to use old (current before the update hits stable) family sharing and I’d say among 250 games, at least more than 220-230 were available on family sharing. This included MGSV:PP and Max Max back when they were released. I don’t know if developers become more restrictive on family sharing over the years, but seeing that old designations will carry on to the new Steam Family thing, I reckon this will be a huge hit in the age of crackdown on password sharing in other media platforms.
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This is amazing! And a long-overdue change. Now both of my kids can simultaneously use my library as long as they play a different game. Before, only one of my kids was allowed to borrow from my library, the rest of it was locked down.
Children? In this economy?
What if you’re in multiple families (polycules)?
Edge case that almost affects nobody. Just make 1 family for all or create a second acc and put it in a second family. And if they add it it would probably be abused more than used for it’s intended use.
Lots of people are in multiple families. Probably even most people. Most people have two sets of cousins. And lots of people have a family of their parents and siblings and a family of their spouse and kids. I have steam library sharing with my partner and my partner has library sharing with its roommate, who has library sharing with other people. Is this new system gonna screw us?
There is a max amount of people and they have to be in the same country otherwise it doesn’t matter so far. But they are probably watching it for abuse.
They’re introducing new rules about being in the same country?? Fuck, this news gets worse and worse.
That is a bit fucked up for Europe, where it’s much more likely to be on the border of another country.
Plus queer people are more likely to have international families due to the discrimination. Especially queer people from queerphobic countries like Saudi Arabia. This rule change is homophobic and racist.
A bunch of people are going to become related all of a sudden really quick!
Honestly though, my partner and I already use the family sharing extensively, so I hope this is an improvement. It is kind of tedious right now that you have to physically log in to the other person’s machine to be able to add them to your family sharing plan, so any kind of improvement on that front is welcome.
Yup, hopefully this makes that smoother.
We have three accounts linked: mine, SO, kids (they share one). I occasionally gift games to my SO and kids accounts, and each time I need to login to their accounts to accept/add the gift key or whatever. I go through this nonsense so my kids, SO, and I can play different games at the same time, but the kids can still only play one at a time (hasn’t been a problem so far).
I have three kids and haven’t made individual accounts because it’s annoying enough as it is to manage three, but if this makes it easier, I’ll probably get them their own accounts.
I already tried it, apply ASAP for the Family Beta. Now both of my kids can simultaneously use my library as long as they play a different game. Before, only one of my kids was allowed to borrow from my library, the rest of it was locked down. Amazing update.
There was a pretty big work around for that, as long as only one person is in “online” mode on Steam, you can technically have infinite people playing at once. Of course that only works if most people want to play a single player or local LAN game.
Ubisoft, EA, and Rockstar running to opt out every one of their games.
Kudos to Valve, but for us remember as a general rule that if they have their own launcher, they have no interest in sharing.
opt out was already possible with the old system, and most devs didn’t opt out
Even Fall Guys only did it because Cheaters running rampant with family share.
but bans do propagate?
Unfortunately no at that time.
They’re a bit behind everyone else with this one but I guess better late then never.
Does anyone know if the list of games that are considered "sharable " has changed in any way? I didn’t even know that some games can’t be shared.
We have 1278 paid games that are included and 55 that are excluded from family sharing. Seemed to be mostly ubi, rockstar and ea games. Games that you claimed while they had a limited 100% discount are also excluded. The last few are live-service or mmo games.
“Family sharing” is now a feature listed on every store page. Same place as singleplayer, trading cards, cloud saves and similar. As far as I know no major changes has happened in which games support it, but that may change now that sharing gets more attention.
I just enabled it and in my library at least it’s only games that I purchased on Steam but they go through some other launcher
As far as I know, it’s mainly games with DRM that might trigger on multiple installs/computers. So companies will disable family sharing. Not sure how common this is.
I used to use old (current before the update hits stable) family sharing and I’d say among 250 games, at least more than 220-230 were available on family sharing. This included MGSV:PP and Max Max back when they were released. I don’t know if developers become more restrictive on family sharing over the years, but seeing that old designations will carry on to the new Steam Family thing, I reckon this will be a huge hit in the age of crackdown on password sharing in other media platforms.
Will Gaben finally become my father??
…
Damn it…