Steam Familly sharing sucks!

[XcalibEr]

Steam family sharing sucks!! From now on I'm only buying games on a console in which me and my sons can play together. It's not OK that games I own, as a father, can not be played simultaneously by my sons. it's not OK my sons arguing about who is gonna play now because only one person can play games from my library!! I regret pouring my money into steam pockets. Since with Xbox and PlayStation, every family member can play any game simultaneously, all my games in the future will be on consoles only!

[Chika Ogiue]

I take it you must only buy digitally on console? If not, I'd love to know the trick you use to have everyone playing the same game at the same time with only one disc.

Steam, you see, is akin to giving you the game on disc. As such, if you only have one copy, only one person can play. Family sharing is not going to remove that specific limitation.

And while I'm at it, how did you bypass this Xbox limitation:

Each console must have either a digital or physical copy of a game. If you have other Xbox One or Xbox Series X|S consoles in your home and other people want to play the same game with you using those additional consoles, each console must have its own copy of the game.

Additionally, each person must have an Xbox account (either their own account or by using a guest account) that allows them to play online in a multiplayer environment in order to play the same game at the same time on different consoles.

Please do tell, it could come in handy.

[HikariLight]

Even consoles will allow only one system to use a specific account online at a time.

The system is working as intended.

It is not a method to play multiple copies of a game without paying for them.

If you and your kids want to play a game together, you need to have your kids make their own accounts and buy them their own copy of the game.

[Boblin the Goblin]

The update to family sharing allowing games to be played simultaneously as long as they aren't the same game.

It's in the beta right now.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Originally posted by XcalibEr:

Steam family sharing sucks!! From now on I'm only buying games on a console in which me and my sons can play together. It's not OK that games I own, as a father, can not be played simultaneously by my sons. it's not OK my sons arguing about who is gonna play now because only one person can play games from my library!! I regret pouring my money into steam pockets. Since with Xbox and PlayStation, every family member can play any game simultaneously, all my games in the future will be on consoles only!

As said above, try the Steam Beta client as you can have access to the Steam Family Share Beta as well.

It allows playing of the same library, at the same time, though not the same game.

There are some other restriction as well that don't exist in the current Family Share you should be aware of, such as:

• When leaving the Family Group (or being removed from it), you can not join another for one year.
  
• You can't share with accounts that are not in your country as well.

So it is a bit of a trade off, but in most cases, the cons won't really effect things if sharing with your family, in your own home.

Someone corrected me on part of it, in another thread. I may have misread or misunderstood the 1 year restriction, so I will post their comment here for the correction.

Originally posted by Ogami:

Just one small correction. Its 1 year from last JOINING a group.
So if you are a member of a group for 10 months and then leave or get kicked you only have to wait 2 months before you can join or create another.

[Versive]

I think that the update to family sharing is great. It is significantly more flexible for my family than the prior approach.

However, as mentioned by others, unless a game natively supports multiplayer on one license, expect that you need multiple licenses for simultaneous play.

In my limited experience, a single license for a game on a console tends to be higher than on Steam - not counting new AAA titles.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

The game devs could enable Remote Play Together if they wish to.

[alumlovescake]

Yes it does suck so does all the games that have it disabled however it is improving. with the new one I can finally use 4k textures packs something that was stupidly denied from family sharing in the past

not being able to share paid dlc for free games still sucks though but finally be able to share free dlc for paid games is amazing

This new sharing is supper buggy and still needs improvments but its like the only good thing Valve has ever done so I will take it