Family Sharing Stopped Working

[Setan]

I purchased WolfQuest and the Anniversary Edition and did the Family Sharing thing for my daughter and she's absolutely loved playing it for the last couple months. Starting a few days ago, she's no longer able to play the game and instead of the option to play the game on her PC, it now is asking her to purchase it.

I went into the properties of the games and it's saying "Steam Family Sharing is currently not supported by this title."

So my question is, was this always like this and somehow she managed to play it for the past month or two without issue, or did they just change it so Family Sharing isn't allowed?

I don't understand what happened here. I don't want the game myself, it's just for her to play.

Any ideas?

[Dinodogdude209]

I believe that someone from the game team recently said that they had to disable Family Sharing for WolfQuest Anniversary Edition, though I cannot remember why exactly they had to do that. Some developer feedback in this thread would be helpful.

[Setan]

So, developers can just disable family sharing at will? That's kind of messed up.

Are my only options now to buy another copy of the game, or my daughter stops playing on her PC, losing whatever progress she made?

[Dinodogdude209]

Originally posted by Setan:

So, developers can just disable family sharing at will? That's kind of messed up.

Are my only options now to buy another copy of the game, or my daughter stops playing on her PC, losing whatever progress she made?

I'm not entirely sure how family sharing works, but I assume that with family sharing no longer being supported for the game, you'd have to purchase a second copy of the game to give to your daughter. If your daughter has a WolfQuest 2.7 account (which she would need in order to play multiplayer in 2.7), I assume that you'll probably be able to get her progress back if she logs into her account after you buy her a new copy of the game, but I'm not entirely sure about that.

As for the reason family sharing had to be disabled, I believe that one of the team members said that players were abusing the family sharing system, so they had to disable it. I'm not entirely sure what exploits people were using to take advantage of the family sharing system, but I assume that it had something to do with the recent release of game accounts for WolfQuest Anniversary Edition.

Again, some developer feedback on this thread would be very helpful, since I don't know everything about the current situation.

[jghost7]

Yeah, this happened to me as well. I used the family sharing to manage the games for my children as well. I made sure to check for family sharing compatibility before buying. Now my daughter, who used her own money to get the game, does not understand why she cant play. And to be honest, neither do I. I feel like steam is not honestly representing this feature and now I have a handful of games that were compatible but now the kids no longer have access to. It honestly feels like a bait and switch, and now they want us to re-purchase games that we already paid for.

[Nx Machina]

Originally posted by jghost7:

Yeah, this happened to me as well. I used the family sharing to manage the games for my children as well. I made sure to check for family sharing compatibility before buying. Now my daughter, who used her own money to get the game, does not understand why she cant play. And to be honest, neither do I. I feel like steam is not honestly representing this feature and now I have a handful of games that were compatible but now the kids no longer have access to. It honestly feels like a bait and switch, and now they want us to re-purchase games that we already paid for.

You purchase a game (license) to play on your account, linked to your account, tied to your account and are able to family share if the developer opts in.

What you do not have nor ever had was a second copy of the game and when the developer opts out, you have to buy a second copy because the other account does not own it.

Or to put it another way. You only purchased it once and it is linked to your account and does not confer additional copies on other accounts when the developer opts out of family sharing.

[jghost7]

Originally posted by Kusa:

Originally posted by jghost7:

Yeah, this happened to me as well. I used the family sharing to manage the games for my children as well. I made sure to check for family sharing compatibility before buying. Now my daughter, who used her own money to get the game, does not understand why she cant play. And to be honest, neither do I. I feel like steam is not honestly representing this feature and now I have a handful of games that were compatible but now the kids no longer have access to. It honestly feels like a bait and switch, and now they want us to re-purchase games that we already paid for.

You purchase a game (license) to play on your account, linked to your account, tied to your account and are able to family share if the developer opts in.

What you do not have nor ever had was a second copy of the game and when the developer opts out, you have to buy a second copy because the other account does not own it.

Or to put it another way. You only purchased it once and it is linked to your account and does not confer additional copies on other accounts when the developer opts out of family sharing.

You assume incorrectly. The game was purchased for the children. It was never intended for use on this account. I just managed the money and made the purchases of the games the kids wanted. They were too young to have adult accounts so we decided to use family sharing as our method of game management for the kids.

I made sure all of the games were family sharing enabled when they were bought. It is stupid to have to buy more than one copy of a game that we already purchased.

Hindsight is 20/20 and if I had known that this would work out this way, we would have chosen another route to manage our kids gaming needs. But seeing as we are already here, I am stuck with it and now have to explain to the kids why they cant play their games.

But thanks anyways for understanding...
Dad

[Nx Machina]

Originally posted by jghost7:

You assume incorrectly. The game was purchased for the children. It was never intended for use on this account. I just managed the money and made the purchases of the games the kids wanted. They were too young to have adult accounts so we decided to use family sharing as our method of game management for the kids.

I made sure all of the games were family sharing enabled when they were bought. It is stupid to have to buy more than one copy of a game that we already purchased.

Hindsight is 20/20 and if I had known that this would work out this way, we would have chosen another route to manage our kids gaming needs. But seeing as we are already here, I am stuck with it and now have to explain to the kids why they cant play their games.

But thanks anyways for understanding...
Dad

You bought a single license for a game tied to the account it was purchased on.

You do not get multiple copies nor are able to purchase a second copy on the same account.

If the game is family share enabled it,then it can be shared to another account.

If the game is removed from family sharing (developer choice) it can no longer be shared to the other account and a copy would have to be purchased for them to play.

Not understanding how the system works does not make it a bad system.

[jghost7]

Originally posted by Kusa:

Originally posted by jghost7:

You assume incorrectly. The game was purchased for the children. It was never intended for use on this account. I just managed the money and made the purchases of the games the kids wanted. They were too young to have adult accounts so we decided to use family sharing as our method of game management for the kids.

I made sure all of the games were family sharing enabled when they were bought. It is stupid to have to buy more than one copy of a game that we already purchased.

Hindsight is 20/20 and if I had known that this would work out this way, we would have chosen another route to manage our kids gaming needs. But seeing as we are already here, I am stuck with it and now have to explain to the kids why they cant play their games.

But thanks anyways for understanding...
Dad

You bought a single license for a game tied to the account it was purchased on.

You do not get multiple copies nor are able to purchase a second copy on the same account.

If the game is family share enabled it,then it can be shared to another account.

If the game is removed from family sharing (developer choice) it can no longer be shared to the other account and a copy would have to be purchased for them to play.

Not understanding how the system works does not make it a bad system.

Repeat yourself much?
I understand English so don't need a recap of your previously stated thoughts.

It is a bad system for managing your kids games as I stated before. Nothing that you wrote in your previous post was any different than your first post, so I don't know why you bothered. It does not change anything nor does it help anything. I explained the situation as you made assumptions about it that you had no clue about.

So, yes, now that this has happened, and I now very much do understand how the system works, it is very obvious that no one should us it as a means of managing your young ones games. It was years ago when I started this and from what I could discern at the time, I thought it would work. I was wrong.

So, Global Moderator kusa, get your copy and paste ready so you can reply with the same text as above. It doesnt change anything. The kids still can't play their games, and they did pay for them, and they were enabled upon purchase. Those particular games were removed post purchase, and now here we are. I am still upset at the situation. I will still receive no help on it. And you can still copy and paste your last response, or more likely lock it...

Dad

[Nx Machina]

@ jghost7

You claim that the games were not family shared from this account yet you posted this way back on 15 Dec 2017.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/540744934216274666/

Originally posted by jghost7:

This is stupid. I just found this out today. My kids and I use the family sharing. My daughter was playing and was interupted when I went to fiddle around on a casual game on my computer. I understand the limitation applying to the same game, but I should be able to play a game while my kids use the family sharing games. Makes me wish back to the days of the hard copy.

The system is not broken, it is to prevent mass sharing your library and developers who agreed to this OPTED in.

Can you family sharing on Epic, GOG, Uplay, Battle.net, Origin?

Moderators have a orange badge, I don't.

There are plenty of threads with solutions how to family share at the same time for two people. Try searching on the forums.

As a side note if you have two children and they want to play single player games on console (PS4, Xbox) at the same time you need two consoles. If they want to play the same game they each need a copy.

[jghost7]

Originally posted by Kusa:

@ jghost7

You claim that the games were not family shared from this account yet you posted this way back on 15 Dec 2017.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/540744934216274666/

Originally posted by jghost7:

This is stupid. I just found this out today. My kids and I use the family sharing. My daughter was playing and was interupted when I went to fiddle around on a casual game on my computer. I understand the limitation applying to the same game, but I should be able to play a game while my kids use the family sharing games. Makes me wish back to the days of the hard copy.

The system is not broken, it is to prevent mass sharing your library and developers who agreed to this OPTED in.

Can you family sharing on Epic, GOG, Uplay, Battle.net, Origin?

Moderators have a orange badge, I don't.

There are plenty of threads with solutions how to family share at the same time for two people. Try searching on the forums.

As a side note if you have two children and they want to play single player games on console (PS4, Xbox) at the same time you need two consoles. If they want to play the same game they each need a copy.

Good Grief! In order to try to prove a point you bring up an unrelated post and sidetrack the discussion? Obviously this is not what this thread is about. I already don't use this much, and the complaint was about my kids having access to the games at all rather than what you posted.

I don't know about your other providers as I don't use them.

And so you are being contrary to be contrary and are just bored.

Thats working on a 4 year old post and was not the subject of this one. Not sure why you decided to bring it up as it is unrelated. Also, you misread the post anyways as it was not about using the same game at the same time.

And no, we can play the same game together on console w/o having to buy it twice fyi.

unfollowing now so i dont see your reply. obviously this thread is going nowhere. I don't wish to be uncivil and your responses seem to be aimed at pulling me in that direction.

Dad

[loboLoco]

Sorry for the slow reply on this. We did have to disable Family Sharing because some players were abusing it. Very sorry about that. @jghost7 @Setan please contact us and we'll figure something out.

[TheSecond60]

Hi LoboLoco,
I (dad of this account) have bought this game on this (one of my childrens) account, but recently my other child is playing this game.
We tried to add this to family share but, as said before, this doesn't work! - Can we manage this somehow - even move the game to the other account would be an alternative.

[loboLoco]

@TheSecond60 can you email us at [e-mail] for help on this?

[Rayne]

@loboloco, my dad got a copy of the game for me a few years ago and I have recently gotten my own steam account. My dad doesn't play wolfquest, and he bought the game solely for me. Is there a way to get family sharing to work for this situation? If needed, my dad could also join the discussion for verification.

[<3babygreenlizard<3]

Originally posted by loboLoco:

Sorry for the slow reply on this. We did have to disable Family Sharing because some players were abusing it. Very sorry about that. @jghost7 @Setan please contact us and we'll figure something out.

How do you abuse Family Sharing? Only 10 computers and five Steam accounts can be linked and only 1 Steam account can play at a time... This just sounds like you want more more purchases and therefore more money, and you should have disabled Family Sharing a long time ago if this is such a problem...

Also, Wolfquest: Classic is $19.99, Early Access Wolfquest: Anniversary is $19.99... Wolfquest: Classic should be docked in price since you already have a playable remaster.