Steam family issue

[pineos]

Hello,
My brother says he wants to play factorio with me but when he goes to link the factorio account it says that he doesn't own the game and that's because my other brother has the game in our steam family so is there any way to fix this problem?

[Fel]

No, that is a limit of the family sharing.
You can play single player with family sharing but not multiplayer.

[bazhosh]

You either need to buy a second copy or start Factorio without using Steam.

[Khaylain]

You can play x instances of a game if and only if you have x instances of the game purchased within your family sharing group.
So if any two people have bought Factorio in your family sharing group then any two people can play Factorio at the same time. If only one person have bought Factorio then only one person can play it at a time. That's how the new family sharing works.

If you're talking about linking to factorio.com, only the person who actually bought the game on steam can link their steam account to the factorio.com account to get access to the game files from there.

[Fel]

What OP is talking about is that the online features (multiplayer and mod portal even if OP was only talking about multiplayer), behind either a steam account that owns the game (on steam) or a factorio account that similarly owns the game (on a standalone install).
Steam's family share allows the person to play but not to access online features since the account doesn't own the game (they create a pseudo account on factorio.com for the steam accounts that own the game but that isn't shared through family sharing).

It is a topic that comes up every now and then, here is the answer from the devs:
https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=333008#p333008

We do not support playing online, and using our services through Steam family sharing,
So things such as Multiplayer, and using the Mod portal, are not available unless you purchase the game on Steam or on our website

We think this is fair, in that you still get to play the game in SP, and over LAN with friends,
The alternative is that you would not be able to play through family sharing at all.

[Jessian Kaanneo]

OP

buy another copy for xmas for either yourself or your brother