Family Sharing is essentially useless in its current form.

[PrattingAbout]

The way family sharing works is practically useless and essentially discourages the purchasing of all games on steam. It should allow for the borrowing of individual games and not lock the whole library off from use. For example if my son wants to play Beat Saber using the family share of my account I can't play any other game within my steam library. As a result I spread my game library over several different stores. In 2021 it should not be difficult to allow individual game shares as we used to do with physical media.

And before anyone starts with "well you can share with your long lost uncle on the other side of the world" that is missing the point. Buying digital should have the same share options (and in my opinion the same resale rights) as physical.

[Crazy Tiger]

You don't have sharing rights on physical media, it simply never could actually be enforced.

And no, family sharing should not provide people with the opportunity to rent out their library. Unless you can find a full proof method to curb abuse, don't expect it to change.

[B-o-B]

Do a search. Been argued to death.
I thought this was a necro....

[cinedine]

Works fine. In theory my GF's daughter could have access to all my games while I am at work not using them or play on console or something not on Steam.
Any other time, it's called making a compromise or she having to play something else. Preferrably not a video game.

[Ganger]

So you could let 10 friends play 10 games from your library without them ever needing to purchase them. I can see it from a business point of view why your not allowed to do this because it would mean lost revenue for both valve and the developers.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by PrattingAbout:

The way family sharing works is practically useless and essentially discourages the purchasing of all games on steam. It should allow for the borrowing of individual games and not lock the whole library off from use. For example if my son wants to play Beat Saber using the family share of my account I can't play any other game within my steam library. As a result I spread my game library over several different stores. In 2021 it should not be difficult to allow individual game shares as we used to do with physical media.

And before anyone starts with "well you can share with your long lost uncle on the other side of the world" that is missing the point. Buying digital should have the same share options (and in my opinion the same resale rights) as physical.

Steam and the developers would love to offer that as you describe. Do you have a way to prevent the billions in lost sales as people share accounts though?

[Zekiran]

People need to remember that Family Share is a *privilege* and not a right. It could easily be much, much more restrictive.

[nullable]

Originally posted by PrattingAbout:

And before anyone starts with "well you can share with your long lost uncle on the other side of the world" that is missing the point. Buying digital should have the same share options (and in my opinion the same resale rights) as physical.

Why should it be the same? They're different media formats with different pros and cons. You gain a lot of convenience with digital distribution. But you give up some of your freedom. Stores and publishers have their own concerns to worry about too you know.

While you can dismiss whatever issues you want as inconvenient and claim invoking them is "missing the point", the folks actually managing the system can't be as cavalier, that's the point you're missing. Systems have to work for all the parties involved and that often means compromise.

And FYI, Family Sharing is optional, not all games support it, no game is required to. So Valve makes family sharing the way you want it and you think that's great. But say the Beat Saber developers remove all their games from Family Sharing as a result, which is their right to do. I would expect significantly fewer games being family share enabled if the restrictions you don't like are done away with.

So one scenario is you get what you wanted, but the system is still useless because many of the games you wanted to share are no longer shareable. Oops. What do you do then? Threaten to never buy from those developers again? Demand Steam force them to family share their games? Assume that none of the games you care about would opt out?

[Sifer2]

Why do you have to spread your purchase out over several stores? You could just you know do what everyone had to do before family share feature was even added. Which was give your son a different account, and gift games to it.

I do agree the family share feature is a weird feature though. Only really useful in a niche scenario like Daddy works most of the time so let's Son play on his account while he is gone without really letting him play on the same account. I guess it's nice in that niche scenario but also opened the door to a lot of exploits to get around game bans.

[Washell]

Originally posted by PrattingAbout:

Buying digital should have the same share options (and in my opinion the same resale rights) as physical.

So you have to drive over to your friends house to get back the game you shared with him?

Anyway, if sharing is your most important feature, put each game on their own Steam account and you'll be free of all restrictions.

[Galdino]

If the owner account plays any offline game with no internet, the other person can just play any game.Of course it doesn't apply to all games (those that requires internet connection to play).

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by PrattingAbout:

The way family sharing works is practically useless and essentially discourages the purchasing of all games on steam. It should allow for the borrowing of individual games and not lock the whole library off from use. For example if my son wants to play Beat Saber using the family share of my account I can't play any other game within my steam library. As a result I spread my game library over several different stores. In 2021 it should not be difficult to allow individual game shares as we used to do with physical media.

And before anyone starts with "well you can share with your long lost uncle on the other side of the world" that is missing the point. Buying digital should have the same share options (and in my opinion the same resale rights) as physical.

There was recently a very similar thread on another forum here:

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/3118150513195469069/

So you're not the only one who's noticed the drawbacks to this.

I mean, I get why they do it. They don't want you just basically getting all your games via some "five people, one account" arrangement. They have to throw in some obstacles along the way.

(I dunno if they do IP checking, but I wonder if that might be a less pain-in-the-butt idea.)

Anyhow, like I said there, if you want to be able to give your son digital games the way you'd give your son your CD-ROMs or game cartridges, you should buy those games DRM-free. This way you aren't dependent on the launcher client that causes you to need to optimize which store to buy it on depending on who'll play it. For games that you have stuck on Steam already, well, you'll need to figure out a solution on a case by case basis.

Frankly, you could just literally buy each game on a different Steam or whatever account, and you'd solve the problem of having to do this sort of predictive optimization anyway. It'd be inconvenient for both you and Steam, but this just shows the silliness of this restriction.

Originally posted by Ganger:

So you could let 10 friends play 10 games from your library without them ever needing to purchase them. I can see it from a business point of view why your not allowed to do this because it would mean lost revenue for both valve and the developers.

FYI, Steam Family Sharing is limited to 5 users per family, as I pointed out in the other thread.

Originally posted by brian9824:

Do you have a way to prevent the billions in lost sales as people share accounts though?

Somehow this seems like hyperbole.

[( ( < < <🤖> > > ) )]

Originally posted by Eisberg:

Valve should make it that if it's being used on the same network, while using technologies to detect VPN and block it, that more than one game can be played. More than one game should be allowed when in the same household.

seems reasonable..

Originally posted by Zekiran:

People need to remember that Family Share is a *privilege* and not a right. It could easily be much, much more restrictive.

giving people your money for a product that works for your family would be better mindset
to put out into the universe.... live by the ice cream die by the ice cream

[Onderkoning]

So if you have 7 kids like me you need to buy the same game 7 times that's ridiculous. You don't buy a book 7 times. Of course you share it with your family. This is online so they can easily do this so it's better to buy physical games, but most developers choose not to.