Steam decides to remove old family share system at the start of 2025

[ATA47]

The new one doesn't work if you don't live in the same house. Are we under new management already? The seas are calling

[Ogami]

I get it, the new system is inconvinient for users who shared with relatives or friends in other countries.
I lost a few contacts myself when Steam Families came out.
But i just tried to make the best of it and there ARE some pretty big advantages to the new system.
Like that you now can play games from the same library at the same time, thats so HUGE.
I have close friends/relatives who are also big game collectors but it never made sense to share games with them since myself, they played pretty much daily so their library was always "in use" and could not be accessed via family share.
With the new families system we are now all in a group and can play each others game without any restrictions at the same time.
I have 4200 games myself and with my Steam Family nearly 9000 games now available.
So for me the new system is a HUGE improvement.

I also love that you can switch the version of a game you want to play if multiple user in the same family own the same game. Like, i own Cyberpunk 2077 but not the expansion DLC but two of my family members do. Now i can just switch to their license with the DLC when i play the game.
Also HUGE improvement.

Overall this new system is fantastic for me and i vastly prefer it to the old one.
But i also understand that there are users who feel very differently about it.

[ATA47]

Sure, I agree with all of that

[Chika Ogiue]

引用自 ATA47：

I'm sharing with others not as fortunate as me

And yet you're the one resorting to piracy... So pull the other one. It's got massive stonking bells on it.

[Rin]

Family sharing means pass the remote, not someone you met on myspace 15 years ago, or your 5th cousin from your aunts 3rd marriage.

Galaxy brains are already sharing with VAC banned friends only to find out the hard way what that entails. This is not what family sharing is for, to rent games that is.

[Omar Helmy 092]

Hate to break it to ya but it's been even more restricted to household only now. Only reason you fine gentlemen are able to share with people in same country is because you used the system before they implemented the new household restriction. So yeah system is literally netflix ♥♥♥♥♥♥ family share. Sadly, also people do have families that actually travel, whether brothers and sisters etc. I mean look at the EU, people travel between EU a lot.

[Brian9824]

引用自 Omar Helmy 092：

Hate to break it to ya but it's been even more restricted to household only now. Only reason you fine gentlemen are able to share with people in same country is because you used the system before they implemented the new household restriction. So yeah system is literally netflix ♥♥♥♥♥♥ family share. Sadly, also people do have families that actually travel, whether brothers and sisters etc. I mean look at the EU, people travel between EU a lot.

Traveling is no issue, its only a factor based on their store region and they wouldn't be changing their store region when traveling.

People complained about the old system and two people not being able to access a library at the same time. Myself and others explained the limitations and why they were there. Well they got rid of THAT limitation and had to implement new limitations in its place.

Beward of what you ask for, sometimes you might just get it.

[Omar Helmy 092]

I mean the problem is some people travelling for long term, whether spending years abroad studying, but like I explained. They made it household only, so you got divorced children unable to properly share and alot of things. Old system I never minded at all and I always enjoyed and it seemed to make a lot of sense for me. New one is improvement but Household and Ip restriction? like come on steam, thats a bit too much. You have people who live like 10 mins apart, can't even share their games.

[Komarimaru]

Well, it was a feature added to be nice, not required by Valve at any time to do so. People kept exploiting it, repeatedly, sharing games with strangers, selling sharing etc.

So, Valve is just making it better for those who use it as intended, punishing mostly those who exploited it.

[Omar Helmy 092]

and there's sadly the type of users like me who use it as intended and didn't try and abuse it and followed It's Faq, guess someone had to ♥♥♥♥ on the good thing we have. It's a shame honestly, I wouldn't mind if they kept old restriction on international sharing and kept this new system for household but I guess Valve has different ideas.

[Rin]

The reason we can't have nice things is because people are people. The majority who use "family sharing" are just people who rent out their library until someone gets vac banned and learns what that means the hard way. This is the reality and end result. For actual families it's a boon but for anyone else that is "family" not so much, which is the whole point.

[pizDuke]

As much as I like to diss valve this is a gray issue. First of all, the family share is a terrible idea for many reasons I won't delve into. However, there were 2 ways to implement it, the honest way: make the restrictions tight, keep expanding restrictions to cover edge cases. And the dishonest way: make restrictions too broad to generate insane hype with magic tech of sharing game with whoever you like, obviously it was abused, obviously it was have to be tightened up later, and now it resulted in bad pr for valve. Not sure what to even think about it honestly.

[Gow756]

引用自 cSg|mc-Hotsauce：

引用自 ATA47：

Steam decides to remove old family share system at the start of 2025

The new one doesn't work if you don't live in the same house. Are we under new management already? The seas are calling :D:

It works in the same country.

Piracy is not the answer.

:nkCool:

No, you need to be on the same household, already tested(and I live in Portugal a very small country)

[KarmaKrazi]

I've always warned people against abusing the generosity of this system. Name one other platform that allows you to share your entire library with a group of people. For free, with minimal limitation.
I've seen people touting about how they rent their family share spaces to other people and such. Funny how it went exactly as I said. Abuse a system like this, and it gets limited. Abuse it more, and it disappears.
Steam was never, and still isn't, obligated to allow you to share your game library with anyone at all, but they do it.

[John Henry Eden]

引用自 KarmaKrazi：

I've always warned people against abusing the generosity of this system. Name one other platform that allows you to share your entire library with a group of people. For free, with minimal limitation.
I've seen people touting about how they rent their family share spaces to other people and such. Funny how it went exactly as I said. Abuse a system like this, and it gets limited. Abuse it more, and it disappears.
Steam was never, and still isn't, obligated to allow you to share your game library with anyone at all, but they do it.

ps4, ps5, xbox one, xbox series x, playstation 2, xbox 360,origninal xbox, GOG, playstation 1, all the nintento consoles

you can take your physical copy and give it to someone else, physically, steam is the only place that doesnt allow that

[John Henry Eden]

digital good might as well be made out of thin air